Alum Matthew Pitt 92F Considers Cults, Rock and Roll, and Celebrity in New Novel

Pitt is also the author of a novella and two collections of short fiction. We talked about his time at Hampshire, how it continues to influence and inspire him, and how he balances teaching and writing.

What attracted you to Hampshire?

Admitting this sort of stuns me, but I matriculated sight unseen. I was largely eyeing options closer to home, in St. Louis, when Hampshire popped up on my radar. Once it did, I was dizzied: by its mission, its refusal to winnow pursuits into prefabricated majors and minors, and the space it provided to embrace rigor, zeal, and capaciousness — a space to offer your own intellectual and imaginative fingerprint. It was a whirlwind. I even pulled an all-nighter reading the course catalog.

What did you study? Did your academic interests change? What were some meaningful lessons?

Creative writing and theater catapulted me to Hampshire. I didn’t waver from those fields, but they widened. Faculty connected me to writers whose power came from challenging convention, likely starting with Grace Paley. I learned that illuminating hidden testimonies is a profound act of resistance and connection, every bit as vital as nurturing craft. This pushed my voice further, made me want to grapple with risks beyond easy grasp. Faculty chipped away at my reticence to revise. They persuaded me — eventually! — that revision is about far more than cutting or clarifying. It’s a declaration of fidelity to the work you tend, a belief that in digging deeper, you will unlock richer discoveries.

Tell us about Tear Here.

Tear Here is the second novel I wrote, but the first to escape the file cabinet cave and find sunlight. Oddly, it started as a story published in the Best New American Voices anthology. Without intending to, I wrote an 11th-hour story soon before my debut collection was published, resurrecting a couple of players and launching a new one. Years had passed, but those characters hadn’t finished breathing.

Tear Here focuses on a rock band called Some Assault, made up of outcasts and misfits who form a brief, intense bond with their algebra teacher. Once he passes, Some Assault’s volatile drummer, Liddy, orchestrates a sonic empire in his image. Eventually Some Assault acquires a shuttered women’s prison and converts it into a farm collective and massive recording studio.

The more the teacher is elevated into an unwitting guru, the more that Some Assault’s roster, and myth, skyrockets. When their fame falters or flatlines, though, the band wrests back the spotlight through violence — some acts are spontaneous, but others are very much as planned and staged as any concert set list.

Imagining a modern version of Andy Warhol’s Factory propelled me at first. I also wondered how an artistic enterprise might warp and degrade into a cult, so I dove into research on the Peoples Temple, the Branch Davidians, etc. The book was also a response to my misgivings. One had to do with charismatics and their followers, who surrender so fully to a leader’s promises they may not even admit their belief has been broken while being tossed overboard. Another misgiving centered on social media and video-sharing platforms, which were still viewed, when I started the novel, as benign tools. I wondered if they would last, and how far people desperate for celebrity status would sink to answer the craving.

Do you play music?

Before the novel, next to nothing. Some one-dimensional piano and two guitar chords. One of my last modmates, a musician, ended his recital by handing instruments to attendees. I got a guitar, and made a hot mess. I took up guitar with my older daughter while writing the book. Now, I can pull off mild competence.

However, I can barely write without music. I know I’m connecting to a piece and its rhythms once it has a soundtrack. A tour of the Tear Here playlist will appear this spring on Large-Hearted Boy. At a Philly event this March, another musician modmate will incorporate songs from his group’s upcoming double LP into my reading and Q&A!

How do you balance writing with teaching?

These streams feed into each other in profound, beautiful ways. Watching students stretch their talents and challenge initial conceptions of a creative work inspires me. My classroom approach includes bringing students into my process, not only when I finish a piece, but also when it flounders, or I can barely contain its chaos. By a semester’s end, I hope we agree how exhilarating and humbling writing is — both things at once.

Now, balancing writing with committee meetings, journal editing, and all other spokes of service, administrative tasks, and daily-duty gnats? That order’s taller!

What are you up to these days?

I must spin multiple creative plates at once. It’s affirming artistically, but is also a deep nod to my neurodivergence. In that spirit, I’m working on a third collection and a novel more apocalyptic than Tear Here (but also, somehow, impish and zanier). My next book is a novella, The Be-Everything! Brothers. It comes out at year’s end and features two siblings who saved each other from a toxic home only to turn toxic to each other. They’ve spent the last decades starring in a show for kids on public television, where they restlessly try on new careers (“Jobventures”) with each episode. Very Hampshire.