Book Review: A Punkhouse in the Deep South

By August Edwards

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my friend who told me he spent his 20s being in a cool place around cool people doing cool things, but...

The “but” reveals all you need to know. (And it’s vague enough for you to find relatable.) Without revealing too much of my friend’s story, you might understand that exterior coolness could mean relatively little when you’ve got yourself to figure out.

Reading A Punkhouse in the Deep South by Aaron Cometbus and Scott Satterwhite had me grappling with the saccharine trap of nostalgia versus the value of preserving history. At the time of the book’s development, the punkhouse in question—309, located in Pensacola, FL—was in the process of being restored to be a Punk Archive with an Artist in Residence Program.

Punkhouse is a collection of interviews of people who have lived in the house. Each person shares a bit about their background and what day-to-day life was like at 309. There’s an overwhelming account of community: potlucks; classes, such as learning Vietnamese; mutual support of individual artistic endeavors. The book is a testament to the power of living in, essentially, a petri-dish of creativity.

Cometbus and Satterwhite didn’t conduct the interviews—they edited them and brought the collection to publication. College students led the interviews, and it’s cool that their work got to see the light of day beyond the classroom.

Since Cometbus and Satterwhite chose to lay out straightforward interviews, rather than edit it to customary oral history style, the book functions more like an auxiliary component to 309, as it is straightforward archival material. I do like reading straightforward interviews, but by the time I was finishing the book, I was searching for a conclusion, and the interviews as they were laid out did not take me there.

I did remain engrossed—I finished it in two reading sessions. My understanding of how we prescribe meaning to our past transformed as I progressed. At first, I had this sense that everything is precious and should be celebrated. As I read interview after interview, I think the novelty wore off, and I could more objectively see why some people had reservations about the restoration project: is all of this an exercise in romanticizing the past? The important thing seemed to be that part of the restoration project aimed to generate an artist residency, so not only will the legacy live on, but it will remain supporting artists.

Donald Yeo had the most enthralling interview, because he provided the tension the book proved to need. It seemed like he almost made his interviewer uncomfortable, but I think the Yeo just might’ve been out of their league. On the surface, he rejected the entire premise of the interview, saying “…I don’t think the house itself was the draw. The people were the mystery behind it” (113). The interviewer didn’t home in on this idea and instead stuck to their prescribed questions. “Wow, you’re really trying to bring everything back to this house” (117), Yeo noted.

This is why this book had me thinking of the conversation I had with my friend about how being surrounded by coolness isn’t fulfilling in and of itself. Life changes pretty fast, and more and more I feel motivated to continue changing as well.

It is tempting to say that “punk,” the word, has lost its meaning. Most of the time when I hear it, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And I use it, too! Which speaks more to my laziness than anything. However, I continue to gravitate towards figuring out that meaning—seeing how it’s changed over the years.

It feels like punk often gets talked about in a spiritual way. So to wrap this thing up, I’ll leave you with this rather realistic look from Yeo:

We pretend like the be-all-end-all of punk is art. The people who rise in it are people who are good at various forms of art, whether it be music, writing, or whatever. If you’re a great artist, sure you can survive, and you can make it in the DIY scene. Or you can work a shitty coffee job or restaurant job, and do your hobbyist art, and then punk will pretend like your hobbyist art is super important.

I think we should have been more realistic about the economic realities. Some of us aren’t artists, some of us are bad at art. I’m bad at art. I mean, I try hard at everything I do, like my puppeteering, but I’m not gifted or talented at it. So to pretend that’s the thing I should do rather than the hobby I do when I’m not at work is a reversal of priorities that doesn’t make sense for working-class people.