And when it came to his final project, about African-American literature, Slichter says he barely got by.
“My thesis was basically laughed out of its binder holdings by the professors who were grading,” he says now. “They very politely allowed me to graduate with honors.”
Even Slichter’s memories of the housing process are less than idyllic. In the days before randomization, he recalls, his blocking group was placed in the “abandoned, musty, dusty” North House—later renamed and renovated into Pforzheimer House—by a chance mishap.
“We felt there was one place that was even worse, and we stupidly put [North] down as our third choice,” he says. “The computer was licking its chops when it saw we had put it anywhere on our list.”
Still, Slichter—true to his modus operandi of finding silver linings when they’re least expected—says there was a peculiar kind of solidarity to the House that he remembers as “the gardening tool shed in the back” of campus.
“The one nice thing about North House was, the only thing anyone had in common was bad luck,” he says.
OPEN ALL THE DOORS
Now, three years after their most recent album, Slichter says his group’s future is up in the air. Slichter recently contributed to a solo album being recorded by his old bandmate and Harvard pal Wilson, as did Munson, but he says he has no idea if the three will return to the studio as Semisonic any time soon.
He’s sure, though, that he won’t be setting out again without Wilson and Munson.
“It’s really hard to imagine getting out on the road with another band,” Slichter says. “I just feel really they’re like brothers…We have that kind of relationship where we don’t even have to say anything to each other.”
So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star spends many pages talking about the many months it took to get a recording contract. When it came to landing a book deal, Slichter says he found much more immediate results with a proposal for the memoir.
“I printed it out and [my agent] sent it out on a Thursday afternoon, and by noon Monday I had a book deal,” he says.
Then again, Slichter says, the book industry is a lot less glamorous than the world of music. When he embarks on a 12-date book tour—kicking it off with an appearance in Brooklyn yesterday, and looking forward to a July 19 event at WordsWorth Books in the Square—Slichter will eschew the big buses of his days in Semisonic to drive himself city to city.
And though it’s too soon to say how long he’ll stay in this part of the entertainment industry, Slichter is approaching authordom with the same wry optimism that got him through the Semisonic rollercoaster.
“It’s going to be performing again, which I’ve missed, but a very different kind of performing, and one where I’m very much in the spotlight as opposed to the edge of the spotlight,” Slichter says of the book tour. “I suppose it will be higher pressure, but then the potential for fun is also higher.”
—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.