Giancarlo DiTrapano

Earning less than minimum wage, often in dark, wild weather, I was enjoying the work and understanding myself like never before.

My boss was a bully, but I didn’t fear him or the GPS trackers he put in our backpacks. There was less and less to fear. Really there was nothing at all.

The walking job was great for as long as it lasted.

As I walked, I listened to the Other PPL Podcast, a podcast where Brad Listi, an author, interviews other authors. As an author of a short fiction collection, then starting work on a novel, it was interesting to hear how other people were doing things.

I moved back and forth through the years of Brad’s life as I picked which episodes to listen to each day. For many years Brad’s monologues were about his day-to-day life, his family, his youth, but at a certain point onwards became more focused on the politics of the day.

Brad monologuing about politics was too much at times. But it was his podcast, and he could do what he wanted.

I usually listened to two Other PPL episodes per shift.

The Sam Pink episode made me laugh so much as the dawn sun rose again. Later that same morning, I listened to the Giancarlo DiTrapano episode as I walked up and down snow-covered roads, drenched in sweat, trying to progress my mentality, and my life, in the proper direction.

I remember the day I listened to Giancarlo’s episode was the day my backpack was so heavy I couldn’t stop myself falling backwards, then sideways, and then, finally, forwards, as I slid down an icy hill, leaving behind me tracks of blood from my head, knees and hands.

Leaking blood, I laughed to myself as I kept listening, kept on delivering.

Gian’s candour, toughness, and charisma was impossible to resist as he continued talking to Brad. True big brother energy, and, like many before me, I fell in love.

The late Giancarlo DiTrapano was the founder and editor of Tyrant Books. Giancarlo’s independently minded vision for Tyrant never wavered, the results often spectacular in what is, at times, a predominantly risk-averse industry.

Even before listening to Gian’s Other PPL episode, I read Tyrant Books books, in the main, because they were Tyrant Books.

Gian’s taste always felt impeccable to me, a new Tyrant release feeling part of the culture, deeper considered, shooting for something realer than the books I was seeing published elsewhere.

What Purpose Did I Serve In Your Life by Marie Calloway, The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan, and Liveblog by Megan Boyle are all Tyrant books I would recommend without reservation The Sarah Book especially being a book that would sit comfortably in any company, historically, and to me at least, represents the pinnacle of Tyrant’s output.

Gian’s refusal to assimilate Tyrant, and by extension himself, into mainstream publishing, striving only for excellence at any cost, was admirable and exciting. Not everyone appreciated Gian’s style, his demeanour, his choices. Even better, or so it felt to me.

The reasons I didn’t get in touch with Gian immediately after listening to the podcast, I think, came down to insecurity, a developing but still incomplete comprehension of how I struggled to manage expectations from male relationships, and a more general shyness and fear of rejection on my part.

But, later, we did begin to interact.

Gian and I both held a limitless affection for Cable Guy, the 1997 Ben Stiller film starring Jim Carey, a commercial and critical disaster on release. Pauline Kael said ‘trust your opinion’ and I, like Gian, would die defending this film, a cult-classic to some these days, but one we had both been down with since day one.

I first watched Cable Guy in the cinema on its release, one of my older brothers, Tig, sitting next to me, eighteen years my senior. Cable Guy shocked me with its perfection, comic timing, layers of referencing, meta narratives, all wrapped up in Jim Carrey’s most aggressive, felt performance.

I, the child, was in tears it was so good.

To this day I can recite much of the film verbatim, despite not having seen it from beginning to end for at least a decade, maybe fifteen years or more.

The reason I focus on The Cable Guy now, here, like this, I don’t know.

Does there need to be a reason? Style over plot, always, as Gian said, and I agreed. 

I write for myself, the action feeling automatic to me, a positive habit, or, yes, an addiction, one I can indulge and finesse. I feel happy when strangers email to say they have enjoyed my work, but I do it for self. Self-truth, self-worth. Own boss, own rules, own love.

Soon after my novel Hello Friend We Missed You won The Guardian’s Not the Booker prize in October of 2020, I messaged Gian to tell him, half-jokingly, that the US rights were still available. There were two other North American publishers who were very interested, but confusion regarding an admin error relating to its Amazon US listing ultimately proving insurmountable for them.

Gian immediately asked me to send him the manuscript. He read it, told me the situation was complicated, things were crazy, he was setting up a new publisher and we’d talk again then.

The only occasion we spoke on the phone seemed innocuous at the time.

It felt a little like we were testing the ground for something else, and maybe I was too reserved, not wanting to show my hand too much.

Gian did most of the talking and told me to write my non-fiction alongside my new novel. I already had thoughts on this, but it was interesting to hear his perspective. Gian told me to take liberties along the way, the truth being the art not the reality. As I listened, I stared, smiling, at a photo of Gian holding a knife.

Beyond Hello Friend, I wanted Gian to read an account of an incident I had experienced, a piece I held the highest ambitions for, and felt sure could appeal to his taste. I wrote a post-it-note that said: Send The Plagiarism to Gian. I didn’t send it. I didn’t know it then, but time ran out too soon.

The Plagiarism, all 5000 words, took years to write, the subject matter years to process. Gian’s insight on it would have been high value, undoubtedly. But I’ve done the work, walked the miles, my trust in the vision, in the piece, was and is clear to me.

Chelsea Hodson, whose class at Bennington College I happened to be taking just before Gian passed away, often spoke of Gian’s impeccable taste. Chelsea would know. Her and Gian were close, teaching together at Mors Tua Vita Mea, their writing workshop at Gian’s villa in Italy.

Villa DiTrapano always seemed to loom large in my mind. I’d been living a sober life for nearly three years when Gian passed away, but always harboured fantasies of indulging myself at the villa, one of only two or three quote unquote ‘acceptable reasons’ for breaking sobriety that I held onto - a form of control on my part, as always. One less reason now. Maybe one day no reasons at all.

Gian and I shared a love of Axl Rose but we never got into it. Gian did introduce me to Stevie Nicks and everything about her seemed immediately correct to me somehow. The same way Axl does, _____ does, some other people do.

I hadn’t used Twitter in a long time. Gian, on the other hand, felt like a master, a brilliantly harsh, funny smack-talker but able to give the flowers too. No one was safe. Agents, other publishers, mainstream media, even Tyrant authors.

Gian asked me to explain my final tweet from 2018, I will tweet again, o. Maybe it won’t be too long now until I tweet again and maybe not too long after that until I explain.

My friend Connor and I were referring to Gian as The Great One. Then one morning Connor messaged me to say that he thought Gian might be dead. This was just a feeling Connor had, inexplicable but compelling. His story to tell, not mine.

An hour after Connor’s message there were some tweets circulating. By the evening, it seemed to be confirmed. I wasn’t sure how to feel. Some personal dreams were ended, I knew that. The world would inevitably have fewer good books in it in the future too.

For around a day I held onto the notion that it could be a prank. To me, faking your own death on Twitter feeling a very Gian-seeming thing to attempt. Not this time though.

A son, a friend, a husband and so much more beyond that had died.

Being in the company, albeit virtually, of someone so confident, effortlessly themselves – it’s not nothing.

When I begin to consider how I will put Gian into my work, I know it’s only my perception of him, also, more accurately or importantly – my projection. Really, of course, it might not be Gian at all, it will be who, and what, he was for me.

I didn’t find my tribe until I was in my thirties. And when I found them, I realised it wasn’t a tribe at all. More a handful of people, the common denominator between us being that we didn’t have, and weren’t suited to, the groupthink and groupfeel that seemed so right to so many.

For such a long time, since I was a teenager and became conscious of such things, I had often felt I had no choice but to seek people to connect with.

By the time I realised I didn’t need to do this, didn’t need people in that way, I realised I had indeed found people. I didn’t need them, they didn’t need me, and we could all be comfortable like that. I didn’t need Gian in my life, and I certainly didn’t place any expectations on what our relationship could be. Simply to be somewhat in each other’s orbits was enough.

I recently signed the contract for the Italian translation of Hello Friend We Missed You. What will I do when I’m in Rome? Drink water, drink espresso, eat at Ecru, Ma va, Col Cavolo, make some notes for my new novel – title: No Child Left Behind, and maybe then pause for a moment and think of Villa DiTrapano and Gian once again.

From time to time, it remains strange to me that Gian has died.

But equally it feels like he’s not dead at all, just existing differently, forever in his work, energy, contribution, and purpose. All I can do, and all I will do, is keep delivering for myself, for Gian, and for anyone who’s the same.

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You can listen to the original BBC Radio4 broadcast of this essay here.

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