Jerry Stahl’s Love/Hate List - Dream Baby Press
Jerry Stahl’s Love/Hate List
40 things the writer, screenwriter and cult film icon Loves and Hates
From Matt Starr and Dream Baby Press
First published in Dream Baby Press on Sep 29, 2026
Hi guys!
I’m honored and excited to share Jerry Stahl’s Love/Hate list today. I also want to wish him a happy birthday. Jerry is a friend, a mentor and a brilliant and hilarious writer. His new book Gonzo Neurotic: The Best (and Not So Best) of Jerry Stahl is out today. You can get it here.
“Jerry Stahl should either get the Pulitzer prize or be shot down in the street like a dog.”
—Anthony Bourdain
“[A] career-spanning collection . . . Stahl is funny, self-aware and very much in on his own ‘professional ex-junkie’ act . . . But he’s a more sober observer than he lets on . . . Stahl is his own vivid comic invention. Life whooshes past him like arrows, and some of those arrows stick in his guts.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
He will also be interviewed by Eric Bogosian this Wednesday at Housing works in NYC.
-Matt Starr
Dream Baby Press asked Jerry Stahl for a list of 20 things he loves and 20 things he hates.
JERRY STAHL is an award-winning novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He’s written 11 books, including the best-selling novel I, Fatty and the narcotic memoir Permanent Midnight, made into a movie starring Ben Stiller. Stahl has written for TV shows such as Maron, ALF, Twin Peaks, the most-watched episode of CSI: Las Vegas, and Escape at Dannemora. He wrote HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn and Bad Boys 2 as well as the cult classics Dr. Caligari and Café Flesh. Jerry also made appearances in Severance and David Lynch’s Inland Empire. His new book Gonzo Neurotic: The Best (and Not So Best) of Jerry Stahl is out tomorrow.
“Jerry Stahl should either get the Pulitzer prize or be shot down in the street like a dog.”
—Anthony Bourdain
“[A] career-spanning collection . . . Stahl is funny, self-aware and very much in on his own ‘professional ex-junkie’ act . . . But he’s a more sober observer than he lets on . . . Stahl is his own vivid comic invention. Life whooshes past him like arrows, and some of those arrows stick in his guts.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
Fifty years of sex, drugs, show business, and bad behavior from the inimitable laureate of American excess, Jerry Stahl.
Release: Sep 29, 2026
Paperback ISBN: 9798988670186 • 456 pages
UK release: Nov 5, 2026 • UK Price: £14.99
THINGS JERRY STAHL LOVES:
Hotel Room Sex
Losing my wallet (which I do routinely) stressing out, then miraculously finding it five hours later the first place you looked. It’s like the universe bitch-slapping you, then giving you a hanky for your tears.
Writing at 4 AM. Because night is the last drug left. (Ditto walking at 4 AM. That’s the time I get the best the ideas. I loved to head out at ungodly hours with Frankie, my late German shepherd, and now with Lola, my jet black German Shepherd. When a dog looks that fierce, you can go anywhere, any time. (I originally got a dog because, ambling around at quarter-after-hell o’clock, I kept being stopped by the police. A dog is the perfect excuse. If I were a cat burglar, I’d definitely have a dog.)
The car wash. Metaphor Alert: There’s nothing better than going in dirty, and coming out clean.
Vintage health & hygiene videos.
1965 Chevy Impalas. Bonus points for low-riders.
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. Still makes me laugh out loud after reading a hundred times.
When your translator is a better writer than you are. (Tip of the beret to genius Parisian, Alexis Nolent.)
Running into somebody you haven’t seen in decades - and neither of you can shut up. Henry Miller’s definition of a friend was someone you could bump into every ten years, but when you do, you can’t shut up.
Great quotations. For years I kept books of quotes in the bathroom, and now have a busload of genuine bons mots for all occasions. “Self-delusion is key to happiness,” Voltaire. “Ideas are not responsible for the people who embrace them,” George Bernard Shaw, “You can’t bounce till you hit the bottom,” Hubert Selby. All words to live by. Which make you sound brilliant - or pretentious – depending.
MRIs. I find the solitude in that clacking tube absolutely soothing. I never want to come out.
Paris. Every time I’m there I feel like I’m home
Not waking up dopesick.
Other peoples’ depraved, insane and weirdly inspiring life stories.
Cats “making biscuits” on your chest.
Doing some kind of random, anonymous solid for a total stranger.
Real artists: Francis Bacon, Joel Peter Witkin, Flannery O’Connor, Quentin Crisp, Herbert Huncke. The realist of the real deals.
Laughing when shit is really, really bad. I’d be that one idiot cackling on the Titanic.
Back Alleys. Whatever city or country I’m in, it’s impossible to walk past an alley – the darker and scuzzier the better – without venturing in to see what nefarious goings-on I might be missing.
Being cured of hepatitis C after being told for decades I had “a year to live.” (Though, weirdly, part of me misses thinking I was dying. I remember, my first thought after the doctor told called me was “Now what?”
Religious tracts you find on the sidewalk. Been collecting these for years. There’s something oddly comforting about knowing you’re goint to hell. Chick Publication has been spouting End Times comics on the street for as long as I can remember, and they’re still going strong. R. Crumb has nothing on Chick. Check it out…
THINGS JERRY STAHL HATES:
Certain words I hate. Like “edgy.” If somebody tells you “We’re looking for something edgy,” run…. Amd “tush,” used by adults to describe other adults…. Anybody who walks up and says “Hey, Big Guy!” should be shot on sight…. The word bra when used to describe anything that does not involve holding up a woman’s breasts. As in, “I love you, bra!” If a fellow loves a bra, fine. If he calls you “bra,” rip off his backwards baseball cap and smack him with it.
Auto-correct. If I wanted to say “Shi’ite” I’d say “Shi’ite.”
Fake meat.
Dogs in sunglasses.
Showing up for doctor’s appointments on the wrong day. (That goes double for colonoscopies.)
Stepping in dogshit. Especially when you don’t realize until you’re getting on a plane. (Which leads to 6 ½, sitting next to somebody on a plane who’s stepped in dogshit. On the plus side, it’s a real conversation-starter.
Self-promotion. I’m missing the cyber-pimp gene.
When you can’t remember people’s names – though you’ve known them twenty years.
People who post every breakfast, lunch and dinner on Instagram, and narrate every bite. it. “Marvin’s sausage game is really off the charts!” Well, fuck Marvin. Who gives a shit? Does breathing in and out make everybody inherently interesting? Or do I just sound like a dick?
When you meet somebody who knows all about you, like you’re old friends – or more – and you have no fucking idea who they are.
People who text “What’s up?”
The “Manosphere.”
Waking up in Cleveland and not knowing how I got there. Though Cleveland when you do know how you got there can be a little rough, too.
“Hotel California.”
Waking up from a wild-ass dream, then forgetting it