SOUNDTRACK

I suppose many people know this kind-of popular song from Rush.  But lyrically it seemed relevant to Insurgent Summer.

There is unrest in the forest,
There is trouble with the trees,
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their please.

The trouble with the maples,
(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light.
But the oaks can’t help their feelings
If they like the way they’re made.
And they wonder why the maples
Can’t be happy in their shade.

There is trouble in the forest,
And the creatures all have fled,
As the maples scream “Oppression!”
And the oaks just shake their heads

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights.
“The oaks are just too greedy;
We will make them give us light.”
Now there’s no more oak oppression,
For they passed a noble law,
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw.

I’ve liked this song for some twenty-five years and my interpretation of it changes every once in a while.  I’m not sure if the book influences my thoughts on the song, but it seemed relevant.

Oh, and it totally rocks, too.

[READ: Week of July 30, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [Eighth Letters]

Yarostan replies to Sophia’s letter by saying that her victory is complete, that he has been looking through opaque lenses all these years.

But the main focus of this letter is the dance at the factory that Yara and Mirna have coordinated.  They decorated the whole room (moving machinery aside) to have the experience of the life that Sabina lived.  It even included signs that said “everything is allowed” and “nothing is banned.”

The dance is basically a retelling of Mirna’s story, complete with Mother with Broom, Devil, and all the other characters that we’ve heard about in their bizarre “love games”  Although the dancing part with the spinning and circling and all the music sounds like it might have been fun, I feel like the audience must have been very confused and a little bummed that there wasn’t more dancing for all.

After the dance Jasna reveals that she asked Titus to marry her.  Twice.  And Jasna reveals that Titus has said some awful things about Luisa and Vera (and, yes, Mirna) over the years.  Yara still hates him.

Mirna responds that Titus was just like her mother: she gave her life to God and he gave it to a higher calling as well.  And it’s that devotion to God, that fear of living, that kills all.

It was that Lord, that morality, that sense of duty or whatever else people want to call it, that killed Vesna.  Yes killed her.  Because that fearful Vesna wasn’t the real Vesna.  I didn’t know it then but Yara knew.  The real Vesna, the whole, natural and normal Vesna had passion inside her just as we did (610).

The next day Mirna and Yara took a trip “to see what others are doing so as to explore what can be done” (612).  While they were gone, the radio station aired a debate between Vera Krena and Marc Glavni, although it wasn’t an actual debate, but prerecorded speeches played together.

But Vera’s speech seemed to be a complete 180 degree turnaround from her previous attitude: “We condemn the current policy of certain comrades who have retreated incessantly in the face of external pressures” (613).

What upset Yarostan most about this was that at his plant about half sided with Vera but half sided with Marc, and it was split between workers and bosses.  (It seemed obvious the bosses would like Marc so it was upsetting that so many workers did).

But despite all the talk at his plant (and the talk from Zdenek) Yarostan has lost enthusiasm for all of the workaday strikes and plans being put into action.  He feels that Mirna’s plan was too good to pass up.

As for things with Sophia, he’s worried that Sabina was so interested in the technological toys:

The reduction of human beings to self-propelled capsules, the reduction of the wealth of human qualities to the most quantifiable qualities, direction and speed, strikes me as the final impoverishment of the species, short of complete annihilation….  The condition Sabina’s research is helping create is not a new human condition. In prison it’s known a solitary confinement.  It’s one of the worst forms of torture (618).

He feels that this sounds more like Albert’s goal that she’s devoting her life to.

As he signs off he wishes that he was with Mirna and Yara whose guiding axiom on their trip is: “My life, my desires, my capacities” (619).

And for the first time he signs off: I love you, Sophia. Yarostan

Sophia’s response, however, is quite dire: “It’s over!  Everything is over!” (621).

They can’t find Tina, Pat or Tissie and Ted is in jail.  And everything is back to “normal.”  The police attacked the university and they destroyed Ted’s printing plant.  And in less extreme places, unions declared victories and went back to work.

And then she talks about something that’s been on her mind for several letters now: did Sabina know that Yarostan and Luisa were lovers?

Of course she did.  She explains that when Luisa found Yarostan, she paraded him around calling him a second Nacahlo! And Yarostan was her toy: getting shaped and molded into a politician.

Titus also felt that Yarostan and Jan were hoodlums. In fact, they said such horrible things about Jan that Sabina couldn’t wait to meet him.

Luisa and co’s plan was that the workers’ organization would take over the capitalist class.   All Yarostan was supposed to do was pretend that he wanted such a victory.  But instead, he daydreamed and didn’t work for them. Then Jan threw a wrench into the works And Yarostan went with him instead!

Oh, and back then, Vera was more interested in Sabina, if you know what I mean, than in any revolution.  But before anything could happen, Sabina realized that Vera wanted to own her and Sabina wanted nothing to do with that.

Then Sabina changes what Mirna told everyone about her thing with Jan and Sabina all those years ago.  Sabina feels a real kinship with Mirna because… it was Mirna who seduced her!  Not the other way around.  To Sophia’s surprise, Sabina replies that she wasn’t 32 then, she’s younger than Mirna, in fact.

And Sabina remembers their emigration.

Jan knew right away that all strike activity was staged and had no other aim but to replace one set of rulers with another.  Alberts said almost the same thing to me a week before we were arrested.  He told me we were going to emigrate as soon as he got all the papers and other arrangements in order: if we didn’t emigrate we’d spend years in jail, maybe even the rest of our lives (632).

And so Sabina says, the pressing question is not why they were released so quickly but why the others were jailed for so long.  [Why the heck didn't Sabina say something about this six letters ago???]  Titus saw them off when they emigrated.  He had been arrested for only one day.  And the police accompanied the celebrated physicist and his family to the house, waited while they packed and escorted them to the train station.

Sophia flashes back a few days:  She mailed the letter across the border [where are they?  California?] and when she returned to the university the next day, there was security at the door.  She pushed past them, but inside everything was different. The people were different.  Pat’s group was nowhere to be seen.

She saw a  flyer for a militant demonstration.  And in her version of things: the union called the police to tell them that subversives had taken over the plant. Then, when the police came, the union said they were very much against the police.

Sophia rode with a group to the demonstration but by the time they got there it was already mostly broken up.  So she and the six others hopped the back fence and were on the grounds when they were caught by cops and beaten up. Sophia planned to stay with the others she was arrested with, but she found out that a lawyer was waiting for her–Minnie!

Of course, Sophia resists and calls her a sell out and generally treats her like crap even though Minnie has come to get her out of jail.  Sophia remembers that Minnie was the angriest one about the whole Omissions thing, but she also was the first to return to the staff.

Sophia rethinks her own life though and realizes that she has sold out many times. But really what she realizes is that she is simply passive.  Everything she has done in her life was done because some one took her to it.

So she went along with Minnie who told Sophia to say that she was a research assistant of Professor Daman’s doing sociological research on strikes.  She gets off.  As they are celebrating, Minnie says that Sophia was one of her best friends, so of course she would help her.  Also, Daman has no residual anger at her.  [And frankly Minnie and Daman come across as the nicest people in the world, if not the book].

Minnie also succeeds in getting Luisa released (with Daman’s help of course).

When she got back to Sabina, Sophia asked her what had happened with all the police and everything.  They couldn’t explain.  So what happened to Tissie? Tissie was nervous and had asked Sabina to abandon her project (the one Yarostan refers to).  But they were so close to solving it!  So she blew off Tissie.  In all of the confusion, Ted was arrested and since Tissie was by herself, she has no doubt gotten back on heroin.

And now Sabina believes what Yarostan said that they should have destroyed the technology.  And she gets [unfairly] down on herself for her life’s work.  She feels that she is just like George Alberts who embraced technology.  And eventually humanity always gets in the way of technology.  [But you know what Sabina, expanding your mind is never a bad thing.  And you were working very hard on a project that could have made life easier for people.  Not to mention you're too smart to waste your talents as a prostitute, so stop berating yourself for your brain and your dexterity].

Then Sophia asks Sabina to tell her about the time she spent with Ron. Tom and Debbie Matthews were political so they adopted Jose.  When Ron was born, they were very busy, so Jose mostly took care of him.  He raised him and eventually taught him to be a thief.

When Tom found out about the thievery, he got Jose drafted (so Jose believed).  Jose eventually met up with Seth who gave him a job as a contact man.  Even though Jose knew about the heroin, he believed that everyone else was above it.

But it was Ted who Sabina objected to.  She felt he was too limited, too square, he didn’t believe in anything goes; he felt the heroin was a bad thing [duh!].

Initially, Sabina left Tina with Alberts, (“Tina was four and I couldn’t stand her; she was so dumb” (653)).  [You lose all your points with that one, Sabina.  You are allowed your selfish fantasies but once you have a kid, they go out the window.  And of course Tina's dumb, she's four!]. But Sabina took Tina to spite George Alberts.  Tissie and Ted loved her immediately, but they fought each other over her: Ted assumed that Tissie would get her hooked on heroin [true], and Tissie felt that he was a jailer.

Sophia wonders why Ted didn’t leave.  And it’s because he loved everyone there, he just wanted to get everyone away from Seth.  So Sabina told Ted that Seth was going to buy the bar and that would leave the garage for all of them. (She lied).   Jose would take care of things with the police.

Sophia asks if Jose was a pimp. And Sabina says no, it wasn’t like that.   So Sophia yells, that the garage must have just been a business, then.  Sabina doesn’t want to think that, but it must be true.  Of course, mostly it was a business for Seth, with the others working for him. And Seth was pissed that Ted did not contribute.

Once Alec and the others came, Seth felt very threatened.  He said that he would close the garage and kick out Ted, Alec and Sophia.   He thought that Alec and Ted were hatching a plan to get rid of him.  And so he reacted and kicked out Tina and Sabina.

As Sabina is thinking out loud she concludes that she is just like Luisa, that she collected men for her project.  But the difference was that Alberts and Luisa were able to use the death of their comrades to bend the truth.  They could claim that Margarita was on their path, that Nachalo was a forerunner of that struggle because he was dead and couldn’t object.

Luisa also found joy in her mindless drudge work because she knew it was all for something, namely the union.  They were on that train together, but what Zedenek gets wrong is that

The content of the struggle, the destination wasn’t defined by the people on the train. It was defined by the trains’ conductors, the “professors devoted to our movement” (661).

And Sophia ends by saying that deep in her heart she always wanted to board that train.

She adds a P.S. that she thinks it’s strange that Titus never mentioned her letter, especially since Mirna felt that the letter was the reason why Yarostan was in prison.

COMMENTS

I’m having a hard time dealing with Mirna and the fact that she is getting set up to be correct.  I’m also having a hard time that Sabina is really hard on herself about the few things that I find admirable about her.

I understand tha the book is trying to paint a certain picture.  And I understand that these characters are supposed to be like the final frontier of people who fight against unions and bosses.  But they seem so pig-headed and ignorant.  They all claim to be fighting for humanity and yet they are the least human beings I’ve ever encountered in print.  Even their revolutionary dance was barely any fun.

I’m not sure if that means that the book is bad because Perlman made poorly developed characters (focused more on the arguments).  Or if he genuinely believed that these people were sympathetic.

I hold out hope for the end of the book.

SOUNDTRACK

Many many bands that I like have recorded tracks for the BBC.  And after several sessions, they tend to get released as BBC Live or BBC Sessions discs.  In the last few years, I’ve gotten discs from the Cocteau Twins, Tindersticks, The Beautiful South, Belle and Sebastian and Therapy?  One of the first ones I’d every gotten was The Smiths’ Hatful of Hollow.

I’ve always loved these releases.  The recordings are “live,” even though they’re not in front of an audience.  For the most part they don’t vary greatly from the originals (that’s not always the case, mind you, but most of the time it’s true.)

What makes these releases so great is that by the time the bands do these recordings for the BBC, the original album has been out a while and the band has toured a bit.  So, they know the song backwards at this point, and they usually record a version that’s faithful to the original but a little more playful.  I always thought that the Hatful of Hollow versions of songs were better than the originals.  It was many years before I understood why there were two “official” releases of the same songs.

There are so many BBC recordings out there (this is an incomplete list).  If you like a British band, chances are they recorded some sessions.  And I don’t know if the BBC is hard pressed for money or what, but they seem to be releasing them by the handful lately.  The biggest problem of course is that most of them are not available in the States (at least for a reasonable price).  And that’s a drag.  So find them used and enjoy!

[READ: May 19, 2010] Girl with Curious Hair

This is DFW’s first collection of short stories.  I clearly bought this copy soon after finishing Infinite Jest.  I was delighted to find as a bookmark an old stub from a sub shop that I used to go to all the time when I worked in Cambridge, Ma.  I wonder if that sub shop is still open.  It was in Brighton, was more or less on my way to work, had a predominance of Irish products and had delicious subs that were almost cheaper than buying the stuff yourself.  I had checked off a few stories in the table of contents (most of the shorter ones) but that stub brought back more memories than the stories did.  I didn’t even recognize the ones that I had apparently read.

And the stories are pretty memorable.  So I wonder if I didn’t read them at all.

The first story is “Little Expressionless Animals” (or, the Jeopardy! story).  In fact, if I may back up, the whole collection is really rife with pop culture, especially television references.  In David Lipsky’s book, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself , DFW states matter-of-factly that he has an obsession with TV and pop culture, so this shouldn’t be surprising.  But for me it was disconcerting to have the pop culture not incidental or as a set dressing, but absolutely central to the stories.

So “Animals” concerns Julie Smith, who is the longest-winning contestant on Jeopardy!, ever.  She is so winning, and so popular that they break the rules just for her and allow her to continue after the heretofore proscribed five days (this of course predates Ken Jennings by many years…the official policy was changed in 2003).  She has been on the show for three years now, and all of the money she wins is sent directly to her autistic brother.

The story is constructed in a pretty wild DFW way.  It begins in the 1970s where we see a woman getting her hair stroked by a stranger in a movie theater.  We then see Faye Goddard, Julie and her brother, abandoned at the side of the road by their mother, waiting for her to return.  It then shifts perspective to where we see Alex Trebek and Pat Sajak having a friendly off-screen rivalry (Trebek wears a badge that says “Pat Sajak Looks like  Badger”). For yes, one of the weird things in this story is that Alex Trebek is a character.

Faye Goddard is the daughter of an executive for Jeopardy!, she also performs fact checking duties for the show.  She eventually begins dating Julie.

The story proceeds following these various plot points, ultimately culminating with the executives wondering who will possibly replace the unflappable Julie.  As with most DFW it does not follow a linear path, nor does it end at the ending. But somehow, setting it in Jeopardy!-land makes it much easier to follow than his more difficult stories.

I really enjoyed this one, and found it very inviting.

“Luckily the Account Representative Knew CPR” is a short short story in which virtually nothing happens (akin to early Nicholson Baker).  The Account Representative leaves his office and heads to the parking lot.  And that’s pretty much it. The titular CPR does come into play, of course, but it’s one of those stores where real time probably takes about 5 minutes.  It’s an interesting exercise, but I don’t feel it’s much more than that.   Having said that, though, I think DFW is quite a master at filling out a character and making him or her multidimesnional, and this is certainly an example of that.  The ending is surprisingly dark.

“Girl with Curious Hair” represents another fascinating thing about these early short stories (and some of his uncollected ones that I’ve read).  The narrator speaks completely in a sort of vernacular.  In this case, perhaps not vernacular exactly, but in a kind of bizarre arrested speech.  The main character, whose nickname is Sick Puppy, is a young Republican with a six figure salary.  He was attending a Young Republican party which was crashed by a couple of punks (mohawked and safety-pinned punks).  Sick Puppy immediately liked them because they inflicted harm upon the host, whom he did not like much.  He approaches them and tells Gimlet, the lead punk rock girl, that he would like to burn her.  She agrees, and they became fast friends.

Yeah, it’s that kind of story.

It is written with an encyclopedic, matter of fact tone of voice: “Keith Jarrett is a Negro who plays the piano.  I very much enjoy seeing Negroes perform in all areas of the performing arts” (55).  But from this bizarrely distant, seemingly out of touch stance, we get a crazy tale of sexual frustration, incest, drugs and violent hallucinations.

Of course, this narrator comes across as unintentionally funny (although obviously DFW intended it so).  It is not quite as harrowing as the sociopathic narrator of, say, Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (although it’s interesting that the stories were written so close together).

The titular girl is also fascinatingly unlike anything I expected.  She isn’t even a main character in the story (although she does spark the action).

The most notable thing about the story to me is that it is 22-pages long, and, after astonishing levels of detail, it ends basically in medias res.  I’m inclined to quote that maddening, fascinating last line, and yet I hate to reveal it because it’s such a shocking ending.  And despite the absolutely unfinished feel, I think it works wonderfully well.

“Lyndon” is, indeed, about Lyndon Johnson.  Although more specifically it is about David Boyd, a (fictional) young man who goes to work for then Senator Johnson.  Johnson is a larger-than-life figure (and I assume it is all true about LBJ himself, although I confess I don’t know a thing about him).  Boyd winds up doing a lot more than his job description and becomes something of a confidant for LBJ himself.  He also winds up spending a lot of time with LBJ after hours–which gets some tongues to wagging.

They are almost on the right track, though, as Boyd does have a male lover, but he is not LBJ.

The story is full of (I assume fake) quotes from various sources (the Boyd ones are clearly fake, but I looked up one or two that seemed plausible, and couldn’t find them anywhere).

The story fleshes out this mystery of the times (when the media didn’t know everything about everyone).  And it also ends with a masterfully touching sequence.

“John Billy” is another story with a bizarre narrator.  It opens with “Was me supposed to tell Simple Ranger how Chuck Nunn Junior done wronged the man that wronged him and fleen to parts unguessed.”  And yet, despite his presumably simple intelligence, he also says, “but on whom of this late time the vicissitudes of human relatings had wrought grief and retinal aggravation” (both 121).  So, who knows what to make of it.

This was my least favorite story.  In part because I find this narrator really hard to read (it might work spoken, like in a bar, but in print it’s tough).  However, about half way through, I started to enjoy the story more and more.  The details began to gel, the story grew very funny (Chuck Nunn’s eyeballs fall out every time he so much as sneezes…which is disgusting but also cartoonishly hilarious to imagine).  And yet, as the end drew near, the story drifted off into three ether and he lost me completely: the effects of too many beers and yam moonshine (the story’s, not mine).

“Here and There” is a difficult but enjoyable story.  It took me a few pages to realize that there are three voices in the story: two in single quotes (who are dialoging in some way) and one in double quotes, who is interrogating the author.  It also appears that the double quoted person is talking to at least one of the individuals, possibly both, about what the double quoted person calls “fiction therapy.”

The female has broken up with the male (he has the most lines and it is nominally from his perspective) but he carries around her high school graduation photo with him even after the breakup.  He admits that he kisses that photo every day (even though he didn’t really like kissing her when they were together).

As the story gets more and more intense (and crazy) the whirling dervish in the narrator’s brain settles down to a very simple concrete test, which he seems doomed to fail.  And from there his world opens up.

“My Appearance” returns to the world of TV.  In this one, a 40-something actress is called to appear on Late Night with David Letterman.   Letterman was still young and fresh at this time, and the bulk of the story discusses how not-real everything is.  How her husband feels that she, the actress, is so genuine (except of course that she is an actress), so unused to being asked tough, surreal, not-real questions that actually make fun of decency, that she’ll never get through the interview alive.  And this will be bad for her career and for his career as well (he’s a former NBC man who switched to PBS, and Letterman knows that).

So, for the bulk of the story, the actress’ husband and his friend coach her on what to say how to act, how to behave [so much so that if I were her I'd have kicked them both and told them to fuck off].  I wondered, given the build up, if we would actually see the TV appearance.  We do.  And it is great.

But the heart of the story, once again, is the final line, which sends the story spiraling into a totally new direction.  It’s really a great piece with a hugely impactful final line.

“Say Never” is another story in vernacular.  This time DFW works on an old Jewish male character (reminiscent of “/Solomon Silverfish/”).  This story is also a little difficult in that it is set up (again like “Silverfish”) with a different character’s name heading each section of the story.  Each person speaks or thinks that section.

The section titles are: Lubov, Mike and Louis and Lenny.  And these folks are: Lubov, an old Jewish widower, who is friends with Mrs Tagus, a widow herself, with two children: Mike and Lenny.  Louis is Mike’s friend.

The strangely formal and highly disjointed narrative uses a roundabout way to explain that Lenny is cheating on his wife with Mikey’s recent girlfriend. Mikey is pissed. Mrs Lubov is distraught (Lenny’s wife and daughter are so nice) and Mr Lubov is trying to assist however he can.

Perhaps the best part of this story was the note of explanation that Lenny sends to everyone in his family and friends list which explains in highly detailed technical jargon how wonderful this new cinnamon flower is and how good she is in bed.  It’s excruciatingly wonderful.

DFW demands a lot of his readers, so if you’re not willing to give 100%, this story can be tough, but if you let it work you, it is highly rewarding.

“Everything is Green” is a two page story (!).  I didn’t really think all that much about this story until I read some comments about it on the wallace-l listserv.  A lengthy discussion about this story has given me lots of insights (often contradictory) that make me think more highly of the story.  And yet I’m still not sure where I come down on it.

“Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way” is a novella (150-some pages).  It is a sort of response/reply/nudging of Paul Barths’ “Lost in the Funhouse” (which I just read prior to reading this).

“Lost in the Funhouse” is meta-fiction gone wild.  The author perpetually interrupts the story to explain devices in use (the history and usage of italics, for instance, or why in old stories they would give the name of a person or place as A___ or C____. )  It also features a main character, a boy named Ambrose.

“Westward” features a teacher named Ambrose who has written a story called “Lost in the Funhouse.”  It also features two people in that teachers’ class: Mark, a supernice guy who everyone likes; he is smart and clever and handsome (but not too much of any of those things to be unlikable).  In this class is also Drew Lynn, an obnoxious, pretentious young lady who wears green polyester and is generally not very well liked.

Of course, Mark and D.L. wind up together.

But that’s neither here nor there, because the rest of the action (such as it is) involves Mark and D.L. and D.L.’s friend Tom going to Collision, Illinois to attend a Reunion of everyone who as ever appeared in a McDonald’s commercial (more pop culture!) hosted by J.D. Steelritter, advertising guru.

As in the Barth story, the author interrupts the story.  This story’s interruptions are longer and more pointed, especially when it notes that the story is not moving very quickly.  The author almost chides the story for spending so much time on them not getting a Datsun at the rent a car.

But the prize lies ahead: the biggest promotional convention ever!  J.D. Steelritter has planned this amazing McDonald’s reunion/commercial and all 40,000 + people promised to attend.  It will be legendary.

In the 70s, D.L. was in a commercial with Don (when they were under ten).  Don was smitten with her, and when he hit puberty, he asked McDonald’s for her info so that he could write to her.  She wrote back and they had been pen pals ever since.

The fact that D.L. is currently married to Mark isn’t so much of an obstacle for Don; however, the fact that she is unsmiling, unpleasant and wearing green polyester is a major turn off.

When the group finally gets on the road to the Reunion (including a tagalong named Magda–even more parallels to the Barth story), the story kicks into high gear.  Not because the plot moves ahead any (in fact at this point the plot is pretty much out the window), but because DFW does what DFW does best: fill a scene with so many fascinating details, so much in the way of character development and enrichment that after dozens of pages have passed you only then realize that the car has traveled only about half a mile.  And, really that’s only after you’re told how slow the pacing is by the ever more interrupting narrator.  In fact one of the “chapter headings” is I Lied; Three Reasons Why The Above Was Not An Interruption, Because This Isn’t The Sort Of Fiction That Can Be Interrupted, Because It’s Not Fiction, But Real And True And Right Now.

In fact, the story reaches a climax of sorts about 30 pages from the end, and the author tells us that that plot line has pretty much run dry.  And from that point, the author reveals that Mark, the Mark from the story, who is himself a writer (although he has been on a major dry spell), has written a story.  And the rest of “Westward” is taken up with Mark’s short story, with even more interruptions by the “author”.  I particularly enjoyed the interruptions in which the author seems really surprised by what he (I assume) is relating.  Like when the teacher says of Mark’s story, “That it ‘rings true.’  And that the story’s end, “like all true apokes‘ tragicomic climae” (which I’m still damned if I can find in any dictionary or thesaurus anywhere), is not the less triumphant for its pathos” (368).

Mark’s story is at once familiar (his main character Dave is, like himself , a competitive archer) and yet completely new to what we’ve seen so far. It is gruesome (his wife impaled herself with one of his arrows) and by turns disturbing (he is imprisoned and serially abused).

The story gets more and more implausible (yet his teacher likes the turns that it makes, despite seeing “technical fuck-ups” (368).  His story comes down to one of honor vs safety.

The final paragraphs seem to revolve around Don (“close your eye” likely being a reference to Don’s eye condition), yet it seems to come from out of nowhere.  And as of yet I haven’t figured out what it means.

Despite the ending, I really enjoyed this story.  I’m starting to think that maybe endings aren’t really DFW’s thing (which is why his stories end usually in the middle of things).  But I think he creates such strong stories and well-developed characters that a tidy ending isn’t really probable, because in real life they aren’t probable.  Or maybe that’s just an excuse.

This is an inspired collection of short stories, especially for a first batch.  Knowing who his favored writers were it’s pretty easy to see what tradition he’s coming from.  It’s also interesting to wonder if he ever considered writing a simple short story.  To my knowledge he never really did.

Unrelated, yet somewhat related:

While I’m writing about DFW, I feel compelled to link to this delightful post that discusses one of DFW’s college syllabi.  It is funny and clever and everything that DFW is.  It would have been a daunting honor to take a class with him.

SOUNDTRACK

I’ve liked Mark Eitzel since my friend Lar played me “Johnny Mathis’ Feet” back in college.  I got some of his solo discs, but by around 2000, I’d more or less given up on him.  Someone donated a copy of this solo album to the library, and since we weren’t keeping it, I brought it home.

So I don’t know what he’s been up to since 2000, and this album came as something of a surprise.  The first song is quintessential Eitzel: downbeat mellow song with clever lyrics.  But after that, it seems like he got his hand on a drum machine and some electronica and just had a field day with it.

The one trend in electronica is to write long songs, and this holds true for Eitzel here.  There are a number of songs here that are predominantly simple drums and sound effects. The second song, in fact, has no words: it’s just a rudimentary drum machine which feels a lot longer than its 4:44 total time.

The few simple guitar songs (with electronic backing) sound good, but the thing is that Eitzel is an awesome songwriter, he’s just not such a great dancey songwriter.  The electronic experiments aren’t bad, they’re just not very inspired.  They may work as an introduction to that type of music for fans of his that never listened to electronica, but beyond that it’s just not that exciting.

Candy Ass is an interesting experiment, but it falls way short of his best work.

[READ: March 8, 2010] “Ask Me If I Care”

No, I really don’t.

I was really rather disappointed in this story.  It never really gripped me in an interesting way.  And even though the band practice stuff all probably happened, it just feel believable at all.

There was something about this story, and I’m not entirely sure what it was, that made me feel like none of it was plausible.  The narrator’s naiveté didn’t really jibe for me with the reality of her surroundings.  Of course, I admit I don’t know what teens were like in 1979 but for her to be hanging out with the Flaming Dildos and going to punk clubs, it didn’t ring true when she was shocked by inappropriate sex.

I was also disappointed by the “punk” aspect of the story.  I almost felt like she heard the lyrics to an Iggy Pop song and based a story around them.

The funny thing is that there was one scene which really resonated and which was, if I may use a music metaphor: the hit single amidst an album of filler.  Rhea is on a balcony and a creepy and inappropriate man compliments her and gives her advice.  And the section ends with her saying, “And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads.  But I listen.”  And that right there is how the story should have ended.  I cared about Rhea and was focused on her story.  But the rest of it, the part about Jocelyn, nope I didn’t care.

The previous Believer CD expanded the palette of music by introducing a lot of hard-edged bands.  But this CD smashes any complaints about one-dimensionality.  It is designed around a concept of “world” music which they have designated as MABEL (Musicians of American, British, or [Western] European Lineage) and ANABEL (Artists Not of American, British, or [Western] European Lineage).

The internet has introduced a huge amount of ANABEL music to MABEL musicians.  And this has led to Western musicians experimenting with very different musical styles.

The problem, such as it is, with this disc is that it is comprised almost entirely of ANABEL songs.  So, although the disc is designed to show the influences of these artists there’s not a whole lot of tracks that show the western bands using them.  (In fairness, you can only do so much with 72 minutes).  And yes, there are a number of clearly MABEL artists here: Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors.

However, as an introduction to a few cultures’ worth of music, it’s pretty great.  I admit that I don’t love every song on this disc.  But after a few listens I’ve really grown to appreciate these tracks from Iran, Jamaica (dancehall), India and Bulgaria.

Some artists that really impressed me were: Googoosh, and her traditional Iranian track from the 70s.  Enemble Pirin, a subset of the Le Mysterè des Voix Bulgares (whom I’ve liked for years).  And Beat Konducta.  It also introduced me to Aceyalone, who I’ve heard of but never listened to.  And I really enjoyed the superfast rapping in the start of Busy Signal’s track.

I wouldn’t listen to this disc a lot, but it would be fun to throw a track or two from this on a mix CD and see how well it fit.

The track listing is here.

[READ: December 15, 2009] Shenanigans

I usually really enjoy the slice of life/romancey comics from Oni Press.  But I have some major gripes with this one.

The art is pretty cool.  I’m intrigued by the fact that the pupils of the characters are white (like L i’l Orphan Annie).  I found it very disconcerting at first, but once I got used to it, I rather liked it.  And the characters were always very expressive.

It’s the story that I have a problem with.

The story is an overly simple–cliched, if you will–story about a man who poses as another man to check up on his girlfriend.  Holden is a thoroughly unlikable character. When the story opens he is kicked out of his girlfriend’s apartment for ignoring her (while playing video games).  And, frankly he never proves himself to be anything better than the loser she describes him as.

Soon thereafter he meets and woos Casey, a beautiful woman who deserves much much better than him.  Inexplicably, she invites him to live with her, even though she was just fired from her job and she already has a roommate–I guess a freeloading guy seems like a good addition to the mix.  But Casey is very smart (although not smart enough to dump Holden) and she posts an ad that she’s offering her services as a math tutor.

Because she’s hot, she gets many takers.  This consumes most of her time and, of course, Holden becomes jealous, because who wouldn’t hate to hate his girlfriend earning cash?  And when he sees that the tutees are college hunks (but really, who else needs tutoring in math?) he gets enraged (see, why isn’t she dumping his lame ass by now?).  Even though he see her rebuffing their advances, he gets very jealous and hatches a bad TV plot to disguise himself from her.  Now, as with any preposterous story, somehow a hat, glasses and a fake goatee are enough to fool this woman who claims to love Holden so very much.

And, of course, later they end up at the same event where hijinks ensue.

I was really disappointed that nothing original happened here.  And, worst of all, Holden is such an unlikable character, it’s shocking to think that any woman would give him as many chances as she does.  Oh, and the whole subplot of her twin brother who thoroughly abuses her best friend (he even inadvertently sets her on fire) is never given any backstory or resolution.

It’s a very poor addition to any graphic novel collection.

SOUNDTRACK

This album seems to have directly inspired more bands than any other Sabbath record.  There’s the band Masters of Reality (who I’ve never heard) and there’s the 1,000 Homo DJ’s EP and blistering cover for “Supernaut.”

This is one of my favorite Sabbath discs, even though, or maybe because there aren’t as many hits on it.  The story goes that since Tony Iommi had his fingertips cut off (!) he had to downtune his guitar so the strings would be looser and therefore less painful to play.  As such, this disc introduces a sort of “classic” Sabbath sludgy sound.  But even though this album doesn’t get a the airplay of Paranoid any metal fan knows a few of these songs.  “Sweet Leaf,” for instance, is quite well known.  It also makes me laugh because it is so clearly pro-drug (after all those anti-drug songs on the first two discs).  And of course, it opens with that great echoing cough (which I now assume is from someone toking up).

“After Forever” is one of those great Sabbath songs where Geezer Butler’s bass fills stand out throughout the bridges.  It also features one of Tony Iommi’s strangely “happy” sounding opening chords  The song itself is pretty dark but the chords are so upbeat!  The song has a lyric that I found shocking as a kid: “would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope, do you think he’s a fool?”  And of course, the guitar solo flies wildly around your head from one speaker to the other.

“Embryo” is a strange middle eastern sounding 30 second instrumental that segues into the awesome “Children of the Grave.”  It’s one of those Sabbath songs that sounds menacing all the way through.  There’s a weird clicking sound in the verses that I assume is Geezer Butler’s de-tuned, incredibly loose bass strings slapping the fretboard.  And, of course, it ends with a wonderfully warped ghostly guitar feedback sounds and the whispered “Ch ch ch ch children.”

The second half of the disc is quite different from the first.  “Orchid” is a delightful 90 second acoustic guitar workout.  And it segues into “Lord of This World” a real rock and roll sounding song (featuring some great Ozzy screaming).  “Solitude” is like “Planet Caravan” from Paranoid, in that it’s a slow, trippy psychedelic sense (is it possible that Sabbath didn’t know that they were a metal band?).

Finally comes “Into the Void.”  This was one of the first songs I’d ever learned on guitar.  My guitar teacher liked the down-tuned low E string aspect of it, and I still enjoy playing it today.

As my friend Andrew pointed out the other day, John Darnielle from the Mountain Goats has written a 33 1/3 book about Master of Reality.  While I haven’t read it yet, Darnielle is pretty cool, so I assume it’s a great read if you like this disc.

[READ: November 30, 2009] “Loggerheads”

Not every David Sedaris piece is funny.  We know he’s not a comedian, per se, although he is certainly a humorous writer.  We also know that some Sedaris pieces are kind of disgusting.  He tends to delight in the grotesque.  However, in this piece he combines the disgusting with the non-humorous to create a very unsatisfying piece.

As it opens, we see Sedaris snorkeling and getting lovingly nudged by a giant turtle. The image of him swimming at all is pretty funny but imagining him interacting with nature is almost impossible.  He then talks about being in a jungle and getting bumped into by a monkey.  This reminded me of my honeymoon where at the place we stayed there were monkeys in the trees, which was pretty wild and exciting.

So, that’s all well and good.  But then the story devolves into an extremely unpleasant tale of a young Sedaris and friend systematically killing wild life.  Not in a murderous rampaging way, but in a stupid-kid, neglect-them-until-they-starve-to-death way.  And there’s really no satisfying ending for all of that.

He is, of course, regretful about that behavior, and justifiably cranky that his parents didn’t assist, but still, who wants to read about that?  So now instead of thinking of Sedaris as blithely going through life as a snarky gay man, my image is tempered with him as an animal killer.  And I didn’t even get a chuckle at the end.

SOUNDTRACK

The Red Shoes is something of a disappointment. While I enjoyed The Sensual World, it was definitely moving in a more adult contemporary vein.  The Red Shoes proceeds even further in this direction.  Since Kate is getting older, it makes sense that her music would change as well.

But there are some really fun tracks on here as well.  And Kate’s initial experiments with world music (the Bulgarian Choir) has really expanded into a more global palette (the island feel of “Eat the Music,” for instance).

The first four songs of the disc are really great.  They show an amazing diversity.  The first single “Rubberband Girl” is quite fun and bouncey.  It has a rather silly middle section where she makes rubberband-like sounds.   “And So is Love” sounds like classic Kate, with some wonderful vocals.  “Eat the Music” is a crazy, up beat horn fueled island track (with wonderfully suggestive lyrics).  And  “Moments of Pleasure” is a delightfully romantic song.

However, beginning with “Song of Salomon” with its awkward chorus of “don’t want no bullshit, just want your sexuality” the album trails off a little bit.  The rest of the songs feel kind of hurried and unspecific; there’s nothing really grabby about them.  They’re not bad, but they’re not all that memorable.  In fact, “Constellation of the Heart” is one of those rare aspects of a Kate disc: a song that sounds really dated.

The one exception to this decline is “Top of the City,” a really nice ballad that features some classic Kate vocals.

Of the remainder, “Big Stripey Lie” has some cool sound effects and lots of weirdness floating around it (and I do quite like it) although it’s really not as substantial as her previous experimental pieces.

Probably the most controversial song on the disc is “Why Should I Love You?” a duet with Prince.  While the main chorus is pretty cool (and uncannily Prince-like) the rest of the track sounds (again) very dated.  The track also features the great comedian Lenny Henry on vocals.  However, since Henry is responsible for what may be the worst sitcom theme song ever in the history of music (it may actually make you want to not watch the rather funny Chef, it is so awful) his inclusion isn’t really all that wonderful.  The disc ends with “You’re the One” a weird (in a good way) track that features The Bulgarian Chorus again.  They seem to do a great job of keeping Kate’s songs focused, so the disc ends on a high note.

This disc is pretty soundly dismissed by even diehard Kate fans.  And it is definitely her least satisfying overall. But if you look deeper into the disc, there are some unfairly overlooked gems.

[READ: November 20, 2009] Symzonia

After reading Etidorhpa, I started looking around at other Hollow Earth books.  And thankfully, someone has done most of the work already. So, for an absurdly long list of Hollow Earth books, check out this link.  I was delighted to see that so many of them are quite short!

When I saw this book, and realized that it was about the world mentioned in “Symmes Hole” (from McSweeney‘s) and that it was very likely written by Symmes himself (there is still debate, but it is convincing that he wrote it) I decided to check it out.

Sadly, this book was considerably duller than Etidorhpa.  It was 250 pages and the first 100 were details of his journey to the South Pole.  Which would be fine except that since the author is a sailor he gives excruciating details about not only sailing, but even shipbuilding (including how smart he was for making the ship as strong as he did,) and the directions of the wind and speculation about longitude and all that great seafaring stuff.  That’s not my thing, so I found it rather tedious.

He also talks about the detailed process of claiming the island that he lands on for the United States (the deed that he writes up and where he buries it!).

There’s even a near mutiny.  When they approach the South Pole, they lose all connection to their compass.  No one can figure out where they are except the captain (which actually seems like a flaw for the rest of the crew, but what do I know).  As such, no one can throw the captain overboard or they will be lost at sea.  Anyhow, this was probably the most exciting part of the book.

When they finally do get to the land at the South Pole, there is an opening in the earth which leads to the center world.  Although I can’t exactly tell how they sail into and out of this hole.  There’s a  diagram at the front of the book but it’s not terribly useful.

First they make landfall and create a superb structure (the Captain is clearly a fantastic builder) that allows them to camp in a frigid tundra and to hunt seal.  Well, actually half the crew hunt seal, the rest sail off to the paradise of the land inside the hole.

The ship sails on and the Captain meets the Symzonians.  Unlike in Editorhpa, in Symzonia, there doesn’t appear to be a world in the core of the earth.  Rather, the residents seem to live on the inside edge of the globe itself.

As in Editorhpa, the people inside are enlightened.  But if you imagined that the preachiness was pretty strong there, it’s twice as bad here.  The failings of people on the earth (or Externals) are pretty explicitly detailed.  Chapters are devoted (in more excruciating details) to the Internals’ form of government (including the various levels of government and how they are selected or excluded).  He compares it to the United States government (which has only been in existence for 50 years at this point!), and, of course, he find the U.S. version to be quite lacking.

They even have incredible energy production (vehicles that can go hundreds of miles an hour and stop on a dime), and the best tasting foods with no wasted energy, and everything else that is good and wonderful.  But they are also not interested in material finery: they have unlimited access to oysters, so they have pearls everywhere.  The captain asks for a handful and they give him some since the pearls have no value to them).  Of course, none of the details behind these amazing technological accomplishments are given, ostensibly because the externals couldn’t handle it.

The Internals are quite distrustful of the captain, and they keep him from returning to their land until he can learn their language.  So the ship stays moored until he learns their language and proves himself worthy of them.  In the meantime he gives them all of the literature on the ship (the Internals are, of course, much better at learning English than he is at learning their language).  And they are horrified when they read the fiction that the Captain brought, determining that Externals are basically greedy, selfish bastards bent on war and salves to their impulses.  And, they are likely descendants from the bad apples that they cast out of their Internal world years ago.  They deem him unworthy of staying in their land, and send him on his way.

The captain feels bad that he is not as pure and good as the Internals.  But, mostly he is sad because he was hoping to make a killing on his exploration and all his information (and pearls!) and book deals and everything else.  Which (doh!) goes to show that he ISN’T enlightened, just like they said.

He leaves the center of the earth to go back to the island where the other half of his crew has been hanging out for several months slaughtering seals.  He’s able to load up (and I kid you not) 100,000 seal pelts.  Good grief.

When he returns home he entrusts the wrong man with his massive monetary gain for the seal pelts, and he hits financial trouble, which is what inspired him to write this book.  So it’s kind of meta- in an 1820′s sort of way.

I gave away a lot of the story, but there’s not a lot of story there.  Further, the Table of Contents summarizes each chapter which basically gives away everything that happens.  And if I didn’t mention these parts there wouldn’t be much interesting story left.  Although that’s not entirely true, the plot isn’t really the point of the book.  It is really an opportunity for the author to air his grievances with the fledgling U.S. and point out all of the country’s failings.

Like Etidorhpa, this book was clearly written as a kind of proof that this internal world exists.  Hence all of the matter of fact (and dull) technical aspects of the story.  It also explains the ToC giving everything away, almost like a textbook.  The strangest thing for me though is that the author clearly had an amazing imagination to come up with this, but he seemed to lack the imagination to make the story more compelling.

A lot of this Hollow Earth work is preachy, and I hope that future stories prove more entertaining.

SOUNDTRACK

I have a very specific memory of the first time I heard the song  “Hounds of Love.”  I was in high school and the Wilderness Adventure Club was heading towards whatever destination we were going to (funny I can’t remember the destination, but I recall the car trip there).  The head of the club (who was a teacher, but not one I had) was driving a bunch of us in his station wagon and this song came on.  My friend Brad and I howled with laughter at the “barking” that Kate does. “Roo Roo Roo Roo.”

It only occurred to me recently that the driver probably enjoyed the music or else he wouldn’t have had it on, so that wasn’t very nice of us.  It also occurs to me that he must have had the disc (actually the tape, as there were no discs then) because I don’t imagine the song was ever on the radio.  (Although I also think there may have been a DJ talking about the songs, so my memory is shaky).  I just remember laughing and laughing and quite likely Roo Rooing for much of the trip.

So, it’s funny now how much I love this disc (my high school self was a metal head, my college self expanded his musical mind rather a lot).

Kate’s previous two records were a wonderful precursor to this monumental disc.  The big hits come at the top: “Hounds of Love” is indeed an amazing song, as is “Running Up That Hill.”  But they’re familiar enough that I don’t have to say anything.  “The Big Sky” is a rollicking romp of fun.  And “Cloudbusting” is just simply amazing.  (Look for the video with Donald Sutherland!).  It’s five minutes of intense storytelling.

But for me, the second side of the album (starting with track 6 on the disc) is the real selling point.  It’s something of a story called The Ninth Wave.  And what I love about it (in addition to the awesome music) are the amazing effects and sounds and voices that are all over the tracks.

It begins simply with a delicate piece, “And Dream of Sheep,” a beautiful piano ballad.  It’s followed by the mesmerizing “Under Ice.”  The opening string sounds evoke someone skating on an ice (which is what the song is about).  As the tension grows (is someone under the ice?) voices far back in the distance compete with Kate singing “Its me!”

The next track, “Waking the Witch” begins with some awesome headphone voice work.  Voices from various family members implore her to wake up.  Left, right, middle, back.  Then, a voices asks “Can you not see that light over there?”  With a far off voice whispering “over here.”  When the song finally bursts forth, her voice is manipulated in a creepy disjointed way.  Followed by different musical sections with cathedral bells.  All through the track a male authority figure condemns the girl for being a witch.  And as the song ends (with a sample of the helicopter from Pink Floyd’s The Wall she is found guilty.  It’s quite intense.

The intensity slackens somewhat with the mellow “Watching Me Without You.”  But it builds again with the manic intensity of “The Jig of Life” a traditional jig with uilleann pipes in the background and Kate’s vocals over the top.  The song breaks into a very traditional sounding step dance seisiun until Kate starts whispering “I put this moment here” (more of that cool headphone stuff) and the song takes of again.

“Hello Earth” starts as a simple ballad reminiscent of “And Dream of Sheep” but it grows in intensity only to break for a choir passage.  It then returns to the intensity of Kate’s voice which fades and ends with Kate’s whispered:  “Tiefer, tiefer.  Irgendwo in der Tiefe.  Gibt es ein licht.” (Roughly: Deeper Deeper, Somewhere in the depths there is a light.)

The disc ends with “The Morning Fog” a respite from the intensity of the music and the contents.  It’s a light ballad (with amazing fretless bass work) that seems like it could have been used in a John Hughes film.  Especially for the “I tell my mother/father/loved ones/brother how much I love them” lyrics.

The Ninth Wave is one of my favorite suites to listen to.  It not only demands attention, it usually gets it.

Hounds of Love is, simply put, fantastic.

[READ: November 15, 2009] Gemini & The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie

When I was a kid, watching cartoons on Channel 11, WPIX, there was a frequent, (in my memory it was incessant) commercial for a Broadway play.  And the only things I remember about the commercial were two snippets:  In the first, a young boy is gorging himself on food and his mother yells “TAKE HUMAN BITES!”  The second shows a woman who says “I’m  not hungry, I’ll just pick” who then grabs a handful of spaghetti from someone else’s plate.

This commercial was such a part of our culture, that my friends used to shout “TAKE HUMAN BITES” at each other all the time.  And yet, after all these years, I couldn’t remember what the play was.  So, out of curiosity, I did some searching to see if I could find this mysterious play (and, more importantly find the commercial).

So, thank you, internet, for helping me discover the play is Albert Innaurato’s Gemini.  No commercials have been forthcoming, sadly.

Well, I thought it would be fun to read this play and see if it was as funny as the commercial seemed.  Who could have guessed that the play would have turned out like this?

The play is set in a poor section of Philadelphia.  The cast is: Fran Geminiani, his son Francis, and his lady friend Lucille Pompi.  Their next door neighbors are Bunny Weinberger and her son Herschel.  The entire play is set in the yard that separates the two houses.  The two newcomers that set the play in motion are Randy & Judith Hastings.  They are brother and sister and go to Harvard with Francis.

Francis is a somewhat overweight, very insecure, very Italian kid.  Fran, his dad, is pretty close to an Italian working-class stereotype, with the pasta making and the boisterousness.  The basic plot is that Judith, a beautiful WASP, has fallen in love with Francis.  She and Randy hitchhike to Philly complete with camping gear.  They plan to sleep in Francis’ yard for a couple days (you know, crazy college kids).

Francis is very uncomfortable about their arrival.  He tells them that his dad is a Mafia guy and kills WASPs on sight.  (This freaks out Randy but not Judith, who is his intended target).  When that doesn’t work, he ultimately rebuffs her advances by telling her that he’s queer.  She doesn’t believe him after what they did at school before the summer started (and she is even more disbelieving when he reveals who he’s got a crush on).

The rest of the story, and arguably the real heart of the story, focuses on the interactions in the neighborhood.  Fran and Bunny have lived next to each other for many years.  Bunny is a loud, obnoxious Irish woman who married a Jew (there’s a lengthy monologue about that).  Her son Herschel is an overweight, asthmatic loser who she says is a genius, even though at 16 he rides a tricycle around the yard making trolley sounds, and collects Public Transportation paraphernalia.

Bunny is abusive to everyone, including her son (one stage direction states that she “beats the shit out of Herschel”).  She sings songs loudly on an out of tune piano and flirts aggressively with Fran and then Randy (a stage direction states that she grabs his crotch).  She is also due for a court date because she assaulted a woman who caught her (Bunny) in bed with the woman’s  husband (in the woman’s house).

The action of the play takes place over a 24 hour period.  In in that short span of time we are treated to attempted suicide, drug use, homosexuality, train schedules, and a near-crushing by a piano.  It’s quite a feat.

The story is pretty funny (although I must say that the commercial was much funnier than reading the lines in print).  But the strange thing about the play is that there are absolutely no likable characters (except maybe Randy, as he seems an innocent victim).  Fran and Bunny are loud and boorish.  Lucille is lazy.  Francis is insecure.  Herschel is an annoying hanger-on.  Even Judith gets into the mean-spirited act when Francis turns her down.

And yet, there is something starnegly endearing about the whole group of them.  And as a slice of life play, it’s very entertaining.  The characters are (despite the stereotypical ideas) well rounded and amusing.  And the scenes have the potential (when performed) to be over the top hilarious.  The play itself is only about 70 pages, and it’s a brisk read.  But as with most plays, I’m sure seeing it is better than reading it.

I just wish I could see the commercial again.  If anyone knows where it might be available, do pass it on!

The other play that comes with the book is The Transformation of Benno Blimpie. It’s only 30 pages (it’s a one act play).  If you thought the characters in Gemini were unpleasant, you have seen nothing yet.  The set-up of this play is that Benno, a very fat twenty-year old, has locked himself in a room and plans to eat himself to death.

The entirety of the play is Benno’s (biased) memory of events.  And the play is set up so that he never physically leaves his room, but he interacts with the other characters as if he were in the room with them.  (Which I’ll bet is a very cool device on stage).

Benno’s flashbacks concern his parents and his grandfather.  His father is a former athlete and is something of a non-entity in the house.  His mother is a mean, horrible woman who never fails to insult Benno about his weight or his complexion or about how miserable her life has been since she had him.  (Her very first scene is quite shocking!).  The only charterer who is at all nice to him is his grandfather.

And yet, as Benno flashes back, his grandfather becoming sexually involved with a 13 year-old Catholic school girl.  (She encourages him to do things to her, and tries to get money out of him).  And, when she turns him down when he tries to do “more” with her, he takes his frustrations out on Benno just like everyone else.

Benno basically went through life being mocked and abused by everyone.  His only joy was in art.  But the art he made wasn’t appreciated by anyone.  So his only love has also let him down.  His last recourse is to simply to eat himself to death.

This play is shocking on many levels.  And all of the characters are reprehensible.  I’m not even entirely sure that I would want to see it performed (it lacks even the grim humor of Gemini).

I didn’t know a thing about Innaurato, so I looked him up and discovered that Gemini ran on Broadway for 1,819 performances and earned him an Obie Award.  It was also made into the film Happy Birthday, Gemini. starring Madeline Kahn and Rita Moreno.  Benno Blimpie also earned him an Obie.  Wow.

While looking around I found some clips from the movie Happy Birthday, Gemini.  And I have to admit that watching the clips leads me to think that if done well, both of the plays would be quite funny despite how disturbing they are.  I also wonder, if I find these stories shocking now, how shocking they must have been in 1978!  Francis’ homosexuality is accepted without any dismay, as is the drug use (there’s some very funny sequences about the pot smoing).  Even Benno’s grandfather’s pedophilia is sort of dismissed (although I think that, awful as it sounds, pedophilia was seen as less horrible in the 70s…can that be right?  I mean the whole Jodie Foster/Taxi Driver thing.)

Anyhow, these plays are not for the weak-hearted.  And I wonder if a revival of Gemini would be viable now.  (Although, interestingly, there is now Gemini The Musical.  I can’t wait to see what that’s all about!  Actually, I want to hear the music!)

The two movie clips are shared below.  Madeline Kahn is Bunny and she is hilarious (although she is cast completely against what Bunny looks like in theplay).  And, I think Francis is also a good looking athletic guy in the movie, too  (Innaurato didn’t have anything to do with the movie).  The clips are quite funny.  Sadly neither one features my favorite lines.  The movie is available only on VHS as far as I can tell.

Here’s one of the pot smoking scenes:

This is the suicide scene:

So, obviously I’m not going to read her book.  But I did want to point out the Webster’s definitions of Rogue.  It was pretty clear on the campaign trail that words didn’t really mean anything.  But when your very own book uses a word as its title and that word is (presumably) used to describe you, wouldn’t it behoove you to find out just what the word means?

1 : vagrant, tramp
2 : a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel
3 : a mischievous person : scamp
4 : a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave
5 : an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation

So, which is it?  Vagrant?  Dishonest Person?  Scamp?  Horse?  Inferior individual?  That may not have been the best word choice.

And speaking of failed vice presidential candidates.  Recent events have led me to ponder the life of the failed vice presidential candidate.  It seems that in the 21st century, the failed presidential candidate gets off okay.  He fails and he moves on, but jeez, let’s look at the last few failed VPs:

Joe Lieberman: A Supreme Court vote away from being the first Jewish person to hold such a powerful office.  A heartbeat away from being a Democratic president.  Since then, he has not only reneged on his party, he is actually planning to vote against them on the health care bill.  Pretty shocking turn of events in a short eight years.

Note: Al Gore, the Presidential Candidate has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

John Edwards: Rising star of the Democratic party.  Had great ideas, was even considered by many to be a better candidate than Kerry.  Since his failed bid, well, you know the story: extramarital affair, questions into money abuses.  Jeez.

Note: John Kerry, the Presidential Candidate has been tooling around the world in an official capacity, often made fun of by The Daily Show.

Sarah Palin: inexplicably retires from her office as Governor of Alaska under speculation and rumor about all manner of nefarious deeds.  Clearly, she’ll make a bundle on the book.  But her credibility is evaporated for all but the most sycophantic people.

Note: John McCain‘s credibility was lost from 2000 to 2008 as he seemed to sell his soul to the highest bidder.  Since the election he has been an extreme voice against the President despite Obama’s overtures to him on a variety of issues right after the election.  And now he stands as a pretty tough Republican Senator.

So, I guess the moral is, be sure your party can win before you accept the nomination!

Interestingly, in the elections in the 20th century, the reverse may have been true.

Jack Kemp went on to pretty great acclaim after losing the VP race in 1996.

Bob Dole made commercials for erectile dysfunction.

Okay, I won’t go any further with this.

SOUNDTRACK

This Tindersticks disc shows a bit of a departure for them.  Two of the first three songs are not sung by Stuart Staples (which is nice for diversity, but it is shocking to hear the first sung words on a Tindersticks disc be in the relatively high register of Dickon).  Not to mention, the song opens with lines about killing someone (!), which is a bit more drastic than most of their lovelorn lyrics.

The fourth song “4.48 Psychosis” is the most guitar heavy/rocking song in the band’s catalog, I think.  And the rest of the disc falls into a fairly traditional Tindersticks camp.

I’ve read a lot of reviews of this disc that describe it as a grower.  It’s entirely possible that I haven’t allowed this disc to grow on me enough, but I’m not as enamored of this one as I am with the rest.  The problem for me is that the first batch of discs are so magical that it just feels like this one is simply not as exciting.  Of course, any Tindersticks record is a good one, this one just isn’t quite as good as the rest.

Mayhaps I need to go back and try it a few more times?

[READ: October 31, 2009] Etidorhpa

I found out about this story when a patron requested it.  I’d never heard of it, and when I looked for it, it was very hard to find in our library system.  But when I Googled it, it was available as a Google Book.  They had scanned the entire thing and (since it was old and out of copyright) it was available free online!  Awesome.

I printed out the whole thing (double sided) and figured I would read it fairly quickly.  [Oh, and just to ruin my cool story about Google books, I see now that it is available in paperback for about $10 from Amazon.  Doh!]

Of course, I’m not just going to read something because it’s available as a Google Book.  The patron said that it was like Jule’s Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.  I had just read “Symmes Hole” in McSweeney’s #4, so Hollow Earthers were already floating around my mind.  It all seemed to work out quite well.

By the time I started reading it, I had forgotten about the Hollow Earth ideas.  Which is fine, since the first 100 pages or so are given up solely to the ideas of occult sciences.  But, let me back up a bit first.

First there is a Preface.  Lloyd claims to have found this manuscript which was hidden by Llewellyn Drury.  Before he gets to the manuscript, though, he gives a little background about himself.   He also relates a lengthy story about the value of libraries and shared knowledge.  He concludes with speculation about Drury, and the revelation that although he is unwilling to specify how he came into possession of the manuscript, he has had it for seven years (as of 1894) and is finally convinced that it’s time to get it published.

My edition also contains a Preface about Daniel Vaughn. Vaughn is mentioned as a character in the story (but he was a real person as well).  In the story, Drury sought Vaughn’s assistance with some scientific matters.  So there’s a brief biography about the man.

AND THEN, there is a section called “A Valuable and Unique Library” which is another preface about the value of libraries.  I’m not even clear about who wrote it, if it’s supposed to be a plug for this book itself or if it’s just an ad for something.

Finally, the story proper begins.  But not without a preface by Drury himself, giving his own life story (his full name is Johannes Llewellyn Llongollyn Drury) but he decided to remove those two ugly names.

As the book begins, we see Drury sitting in his study.  It is November in the Ohio Valley and he is rather despondent about the weather.  He selects a book at random.  It is Cicero and he reads, “Never less alone than when alone,” and it sets him off into a (frankly over-reactive) rage.  He is alone right now, he says.  How could he be any more alone that he is?  He wagers everything he owns, including his soul, that he is alone.

When a voice says that he has lost his wager, Drury kind of freaks out.  And there in front of him is a very old man with long hair and a long beard.  The man demands Drury’s soul since he clearly lost the wager.  When Drury refuses, the man pulls out a knife and lays it on the table.  When things settle down, the stranger tells Drury that he will be back to relate a story that Drury will scarcely believe.  When he departs, the man forgets his knife.  When Drury reaches for it, it is ice cold.  But it soon disappears.

Drury asks some scientists what this could mean, and they basically say that he has dreamed the whole thing.  But the man left a hair in his room which Drury shows as evidence.  The scientists dismiss it.

Drury returns home, crushed.  But the visitor does not return.  Drury has more or less forgotten about it until the anniversary of the visit approaches.  And then, exactly one year later, the visitor reappears exactly as he did the first night.  He reminds Drury of his first visit, whips out his knife once more and then settles down to business. The man says that because of the philosophical frame of mind that Drury showed, he is a suitable candidate to hear the man’s tale.  The man asks Drury to listen to the manuscript, to ask as many questions as he can think of and then, when all is said and done, to pledge to hide the manuscript for 30 years.  After the thirty years are up, Drury must publish  the book or find someone who can (and this is how Lloyd found the manuscript).

The man, who informs Drury that his name is “I-am-the-Man-Who-Did-It,” reads the manuscript.

As the story begins, we get a lengthy bit about alchemy.  Up till now the story had been pretty fast paced and interesting (even the early descriptions of Ohio winters were well paced).  But I-am-the-Man is setting out to prove his case, so we get the first of many very meticulously argued sections.  He reads “The Alchemistic Letter” a five and a half page history of scientists who believe in alchemy & the secret society that alchemists join.  It’s a tad dry.

After the dry letter, the story begins in earnest.  I-am-the-Man tells his tale of joining this alchemical society and learning all there is to know about it.  However, he reneges on his pledge to keep everything a secret and is captured and punished accordingly.  This intriguing and intense section goes on for some 100 pages.  Long enough that I forgot the book was about a Hollow Earth at all.  There’s kidnapping, dead bodies, blindfolds, secretive transportation, everything!

Finally, after untold days in a jail, I-am-the-Man is released in front of a cave in Kentucky.  He is greeted by a man with no eyes and a cold and clammy skin.  He is a Hollow Earth dweller.  Obviously, I-am-the-Man freaks out about this.  But he is forcibly persuaded to join this fellow.  And from this point on, they descend further and further into the earth.

I-am-the Man sees giant mushrooms (which smell of pineapple among other things), he has grand delusions, he gets completely drunk on Hollow Earth alcohol, he sees massive lakes underground, as well as the REAL reason volcanoes explode (something to do with water displacing air–there’s obviously no molten core of the earth).  And all of this story is in aid of seeking the enchanted one: Etidorhpa.

So, for an 1895 book, how does it hold up?  Quite well, actually. The prose was sharp and well-written.  The plot was rather intriguing, and the descriptions of the fantasies below ground were very cool.

One of the fundamental aspects of the story is that people who live on the surface are, for lack of a better word, unenlightened. They believe only what their senses are aware of.  They cannot possibly understand what the truly enlightened people who live under the earth know: that all life is better underground.  There’s no harsh sun or elemental problems to contend with, just wondrous peace, harmony and awesomeness.  (Although, interestingly, we never see anyone other than the guide).   That’s one of the reasons why the manuscript can’t be published now.  Surface dwellers could never deal with the truths that are contained within.  And maybe in thirty years, they’d start to “get it.”

However, a few things stand out as being a little annoying.  The first is the intense lecturing that goes on.  In nearly every chapter, the Hollow Earth guide and I-am-the-Man have philosophical/scientific arguments about what is happening.  The arguments are usually interesting for a bit, but they tend to go on and on.  And, frequently there are sections where the jargon gets a bit dense.

Another problem is The-Man himself who seems to alternate between incredulous shock about what he sees, delight about its magnificence and bitter anger about what is happening to him.  These reactions are all quite reasonable, but they don’t feel realistic in the story.  The problem is that The-Man gets mad and lashes out, saying that nothing can be true, even though every step along the way the dweller guy easily proves all of his assertions.

Perhaps people thought differently back then (or maybe a 21st century reader feels more blase about these fantastic ideas than a 19th century reader would be), but I’m surprised at how after being through so much (taken around and the under the world), he still thinks that the man is trying to kill him (even though, come on, that’s an incredibly lengthy trip full of amazing delights and crazy scenery just to kill someone).  I do understand that his belligerent tone allows for the Hollow Earther to prove him wrong, (something Lloyd was obviously quite insistent upon) but it still seems rather silly.

It’s also funny how aggressively Drury fights The-Man whenever he interrupts the tale.  There’s just so much hostility between these men (which I guess is the sign of a thinker?). At one point The-Man drags Drury through the cold night to a ferry boat where they sail across a lake just to make a point.  The hostility throughout the book is rather disconcerting.

But this all makes sense.  The whole story is written as a sort of proof of the Hollow Earth Theory.  So, all of his assertions must be backed up by science.  And he is trying to anticipate every criticism and contrary attitude that can be thrown at him.  Thus, the lengthy philosophical explanations, the in-depth science stuff, the actual physical demonstrations (The-Man brings out some flasks to demonstrate water seepage) are all there to show of the validity of this story.

The one thing that I found to be a disadvantage about reading it now, is that while I am obviously well aware that we do not have a hollow earth, I don’t know enough about the science that they talk about to know exactly what they’re talking about.  So, when they talk about water flowing a certain way because of the density of the brine, well, I don’t know anything about that.  Or if gravity actually lessens as you get closer to the center of the earth.  Or any of the other odd but insistent proofs that The-Man offers.

But that’s all fine and good, because, excepting these proofs, the science fiction aspects of the story are really cool.  Especially when he drinks the hallucinatory liquor (the fantasy sequences are wonderfully over the top).  It does really make the idea of a Hollow Earth sound very compelling.  And there were times when I forgot that it was all hogwash, and thought how cool it would be to float around in gravity-free underground space.

But alas, we know it is all nonsense.

The story ends somewhat frustratingly without telling us about the sacred land of Etidorpha.  (There’s some implication that the readers will learn all about things in the land of Etidorpha when they are smart enough to grasp the wisdom of the underground dwellers). But it is a very satisfying story, nonetheless.

After the story there is a summary of the Death of Prof. Daniel Vaughn.  The story goes that people were so moved by him when they read the book that they submitted testimony about him and his life to Lloyd for inclusion in future copies.   In particular, this section talks about what happened to him later in life (that his generosity basically made him destitute).

The final section contains reviews of the book (all glowing of course).  And the reviews are quite true.  One thing I haven’t mentioned, which the reviewers bring up, is the illustrations.  J. Augustus Knapp fills the book with remarkably cool engravings.  They are detailed and very evocative.  The reviews suggest that they are in color, but the scanner does not translate them that way, which is definitely a shame.  If I can find a copy of the book I’d like to see them in their full glory.

So, for a book I’d never heard of, I can give it some seriously high marks.  It’s not for everyone, but if you like cool science fiction, this is a pretty great story.  I’m surprised that it seems to be so hard to find in print.

For more about Etidorhpa, check out this site.

SOUNDTRACK

This second album (often called II, but according to the band, is called Tindertsticks) continues the coolness of the first disc.  But this disc seems to have a few more “singles” (or what could have been singles) on it.  “A Night In” has a great slow building, string filled chorus that reaches tremendous heights.  Staples’ voice sounds even better, too.  A bit fuller, a bit less hesitant.

It also features the gorgeous, vibe-fueled, spoken word tale called “My Sister.”  And then there’s the fantastic, monumental “Tiny Tears.”  (It was featured in a Sopranos episode (Season One, Episode 12: “Isabella”) perfectly, and I was delighted to hear it. (I’m not the only one who thinks it was perfect, see here]).  It begins as a quiet piece with the fantastic opening lyrics:

You’ve been lying in bed for a week now
Wondering how long it’ll take
You haven’t spoke, or looked at her in all that time
It’s the easiest line you could break
She’s been going round her business as usual
Always with that melancholy smile
But you were too busy looking into yourself
To see those tiny tears in her eyes.

And of course, it builds into a string filled melancholy ballad.  Beautiful.  Another great track, “Talk to Me” gets so intense as the song progresses (dissonant strings and horns cranked to ten), that it’s almost scary.  This is followed by the contrite and very mellow “No More Affairs.”  Oh, and then comes the stunning duet “Travelling Light” which is sheer beauty.

I also really enjoy the two instrumentals “Vertrauen II” and “Vertrauen III” for their creepy atmospherics and theremin use.

It’s another stellar collection from Tindertsicks.  And another triumph of atmospheric music.  And, frankly, it’s just as well that they gave this disc the same name as the first as they are practically a continuous cycle of awesomeness.

This disc was reissued with the previously hard to find “Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre 12.3.95.”

[READ: October 19, 2009] “Prosperous Friends”

This story of a disaffected married couple didn’t really appeal to me at first.  The characters (especially the wife) seemed very caustic but there hadn’t been enough setup or explanation for the causticity.  When they visit his old (girl?)friend, the four people have an uncomfortable meal together.  I also had a but of trouble keeping the two men straight: Ted and Ben are a little too similar as names.

And the third problem I had was that the author doesn’t identify speaking out loud (no quotes or dashes or anything).  And so it was not always apparent if the person was talking or if he or she was thinking and then talking.  And I understand that authors do things like that for a reason, but it just confused matters for me.

As the story drew to a close and Isabel and Ned were together, these stylistic choices were less bothersome.  And, when the couple united under a difficult situation, it was something of a payoff for all they had been through.  But overall I felt like the story was asking of me more than I was wiling to give.

SOUNDTRACK

It’s surprising how catchy Sister starts.  “Schizophrenia” is wonderfully sing-songy.  And “Catholic Block,” while noisy, is certainly single-worthy (and would likley be one if it were released today).  Kim has two tracks, “Beauty Lies in the Eye” which is a spoken word piece ala “Shadow of a Doubt.”  While “Pacific Coast Highway” is one of her scarier/noisier pieces.

Track #5, “Pipeline/Kill Time” is Lee’s first entry on the disc.  It starts as an instrumental and continues into a raucous Lee track.  “Kotton Krown” is a mellow mantra-like piece, while “White Cross” returns the band to its noisier roots.  The disc ends with “Master-Dik.” It’s a noise fueled riotous song.  It starts in something of a rap style (hard to call it actual rap).  It features a Kiss sample (from “Strutter”) as well as some of the first references to Ciccone Youth.

Overall it’s a rocking, great album, and it contains everything from poppy singles to outright noise.  It’s  an excellent middle piece to the great triumvirate of EVOL, Sister and Daydream Nation.

[READ: July 20, 2009] Refresh, Refresh

Sarah received a copy of this book, and since it came from the very cool comics press First Second, I was very excited to read it.

I have to say right up front, the content of this book is just not my thing.  It concerns teenaged boys whose fathers are in the Iraq war.  Violence is all they know, and violence is what they do.  I just don’t read this kind of book at all.

However, the story was very gripping.  First, of course, because it could very well be real, but second because it is told so well.

The three boys of the story have started a fight club of sorts to toughen each other up.  And despite the possibility of that being an overused premise, you can almost assume that the boys aren’t trying to copy the movie Fight Club.  They are Oregon youths with virtually nothing to do.  They’re not trying to be hip and cool like Brad Pitt, they’re just bored.  And they’re angry.

And while their mothers try (and often fail) to hold their houses together, the boys go into the backyard and beat each other up.  For fun.  (A sock full of quarters comes into play at one point).  One of the boys teaches his younger brother about violence (by putting a spider into his ant farm).  Everything to them is being a better soldier, tougher and tougher still.  Whether it’s hunting, ambushing bullies, or picking up women in bars (bars that don’t card because everyone of legal age is in the war), these boys are growing up too fast.

The only thing that eases their minds is to consonantly hit the refresh button on their email.  Hoping, hoping, hoping that their fathers have written them a message that says things are okay.

One of the boys has a way out, though. Josh plans to go to college.  His friends tease him and expect that he’ll enlist with them as soon as they are old enough.  But he holds out hope for something better.

And then an event happens that changes everything.  This event spirals out of control for all of them (and perhaps a little unbelievably).  Their solution to the crisis is basically a last resort. And the cycle of violence continues.

I have to wonder if their solution won’t just cause them more problems.  Not for the obvious cycle of violence reason, but on a simple, practical level. When it is discovered what happened, I would think that the people they go to for help will not look too kindly on them.  But then, I don’t know much about it, really.

So, all in all, I didn’t like the story.  It was brutal and rather hopeless.  And yet, it was a good story.  And I don’t want to get all After School Special-y, but it feels like an important story, especially for kids in that situation.  It doesn’t seem like their voices are heard very often.

When I finished reading the book, I pieced together the credits of who actually wrote this thing.

And it goes like this:

Benjamin Percy wrote the short story “Refresh Refresh” in 2006.  It’s available in his book Refresh, Refresh.

James Ponsoldt wrote a screenplay based on the story. It will begin filming in late 2009.

Danica Novgorodoff based this graphic novel on Ponsoldt’s screenplay.  So, I don’t know exactly how faithful it is to the short story, (although I’m sure it’s not unfaithful). Her art is pretty dark and vivid.  The violence definitely comes through.  The style is also kind of rough and ragged, which really heightens the violence.

Reviews of the short story are universally positive.  And I have to wonder if I would enjoy the original short story more than the graphic novel…at he very least I wish I had read the story first as I don’t know that I’d want to read it now.

But none of this is to detract from the quality of the work.  As I say, it’s just not my cup of tea.

SOUNDTRACK

After the insane hardcore mess of Land Speed Record, this EP is a bit of a change.  It’s still pretty hardcore, but now you can tell that the noisiness of the guitar is deliberate.  Bob Mould is playing around with multiple layers of feedback and distortion to create a wall of noise that sometimes hides, sometime accentuates the overall sound.

What strikes me as odd in retrospect is that I think of Bob Mould as one of alternative rock’s poppier songwriters.  And yet when you listen to this disc the two poppiest (which is a relative term to be sure) tracks are by Grant Hart.

The first two tracks are fast and furious.  But what separates them from 4 x 4 hardcore is, mostly Greg Norton’s bass.  He’s all over the place.  There’s also some diversity within the songs themselves (a little guitar squeal in “Deadly Skies”).

“It’s Not Funny Anymore” (Hart’s song) is surprisingly upbeat (with guitar harmonics) and is not quite as noisy (although it’s still pretty noisy, and is not going on the radio anytime soon).

The next two track are more of Mould’s screamy hardcore.

The longest song (4 and a half minutes) is also by Hart. “Diane” is a creepy song about abduction and murder (yet with something of a  singalong chorus).  I actually know the Therapy? version better because I had listened to that disc a lot when it came out.  But the Hüsker’s version is even creepier.  Wikipedia says it is about a real incident (which makes it less creepy than if Hart has made it up, I suppose).

It ends with Mould’s least hardcore song, although the guitar solo is pretty insane.

And then it’s over.  7 songs in twenty minutes.  That’s nearly half as many as on Land Speed Record.  You can see the songs changing already.  Just wait till the next disc!

[READ: June 29, 2009] McSweeney’s #5

McSweeney’s #5 plays with cover ideas again.  On this one, the cover idea is actual different covers and slipcovers.  The book is hardcover, with three different cover designs.  It also has 4 different slipcover designs. The colophon explains that if one wanted one could have requested for free) each of the cover designs because they did not intend to make people buy multiple issues.  Click on the covers to see them enlarged on flickr (all images are copyright McSweeney’s).

This is the Koppel front cover.

I will quote from the McSweeney’s site their description of the covers:

As many of you know, the new issue of our print version is out, and by now is in most stores. This issue is a hardcover book, and features four different dust jackets. One dust jacket has on it a man who seems to be suffering from terrible skin lesions. The second cover looks very much like the cover of Issue No. 1, with the addition of a medical drawing of a severed arm. The third cover is blank, with all of its images hiding on the back. Hiding from the bad people. The last cover is just red. Or, if you will, simply red.

In addition, under each dust jacket is a different cover. One features pictures of Ted Koppel. One features new work by Susan Minot. And a third features a variation on the second cover, described above, though this version is legible only with aid of mirror. This inner cover also is featured under the red dust jacket.

I was quite surprised when I took the slipcover off mine, as it is possible that I have never done so before.  I have the Ted Koppel cover (which, all things considered, is pretty cool).  My slipcover is blank on the front (very odd) with the half-face design on the back cover.

This is the Koppel back cover.

The colophon also explains that they will allow authors’ stylistic quirks to remain, and not to be uniform in their publishing appearance.  This seems especially relevant about Elizabeth Klemm’s “Mr. Squishy” which they left unchanged at all…notable in that there are a typographical glitches left in.  (where the double dash is rendered as an æ because it is translated from a different program).  Oh, and they are using a larger font size. 11.2 up from 10.5.

They also admit that they are publishing some “normaler” fiction.  “The Days Here,” “Soot,” “The Observers” and “The Hypnotist’s Trailer” are all un-self conscious, and thus threw the editors for a loop.  The colophon includes a chart showing the appeal of certain subject matter and themes: Stories involving interactions between motorcycle gangs and octopuses that talk is a +40, while A story that involves relationship problems being dealt with in a fabulous Manhattan apartment is a -55.

They also admit that LaFarge’s story has already been published elsewhere (in 6500 Magazine, which I had heard of but which I can’t find anything about anywhere).  They then say which award (and the monetary amount) the authors should win for these great stories.

The Submissions policy is included with a circular chart showing how many people that got published this time around were actually unknown to the editors (48%).

The next page is 64 thumbnails of previous McSweeney’s issues all shrunk down so that you can see the all 64.  Some stories are quite apparent: Marfa, the Supreme Court basketball one and Symmes Hole.

The contents page is quite helpful this time around. It gives the author, the title, what type of story it is, the subject matter or theme of each piece, whether or not it is humorous (this so that people would know whether or not to describe McSweeney’s as a humorous publication, the degree of difficulty of the piece and the page number.

Genre Types include: (F) Fiction, (NF) Nonfiction, (F/NF) Fiction/Nonfiction Hybrid, (E) Essay, (T-P E) Thought-Provoking Essay, (DE) Dumb Experiment, (I) Interview with Ted Koppel or Joshuah Bearman’s Dad (FARPiMA) Fiction about Relationship Problems in Manhattan

Difficulty levels: (E) Easy and Enjoyable, (M) Enjoyable, but moderately difficult (SD) Enjoyable but somehow more difficult, (D) Difficult (and yet still enjoyable), (VD) Very Difficult (but fun when parsed), Ch (Challenging) (RS) Rural Setting, (M) Talk of Life on Mars.

There is also more discussion about the wonders of Iceland (and the baby bird nest that they found).  As well as the affordability and timeliness of using a publisher in Iceland (and how they would print faster–including shipping by boat–than the publisher right there in Brooklyn).  And also how the quality of the work is so good that it’s absurd that publishers publish expensive yet crappy looking books.

DIGRESSION: My coworker was just browsing the issue and–I kid you not–marveled at the quality of the publishing, how it was stitched in, the way they don’t anymore.

Also: a large ad for The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature: the first book published by McSweeney’s, and as such it is our obligation to purchase one.  [It is also very created very well by Oddi Publishing in Iceland].

LETTERS:

COURTNEY ELDRIDGE
Shows several examples of stories that are in her “will not complete” file.

GARY PIKE
A dream about a land of nothing but domes.

SARAH VOWELL-Nationalism Round up #2
Sarah feels awkward about the 4th of July and actually told a company to remove the promotional flag that they placed on her (and everyone else’s) lawn because the flag symbolizes the freedom to not have that done to her.  Part Two discusses the feeling of warmth she gets from a NYC subway sign that informs all passengers that if they are sick, they will not be left alone.  She secretly hopes someone gets sick so she can offer, at the very least, a tissue.

GARY PIKE
A second dream.  This one about the Pike’s son flying a plane at an Air Force base.  The flight lasts several days and, despite the fact that the dreamer was in the plane with the son at times, when the plane lands, the son is pronounced dead.  The son died in a seated position, but how will he fit in a coffin that way?

LYDIA DAVIS
This is a discussion about Davis’ piece.  (See the piece below for more details about these letters).  There are several letters that go back and forth and it is nice to see how accommodating the editors are to Davis’ suggestions and preferences.

THE MAIN STORIES

KELLY FEENEY-”The Days Here”
A story in 11 parts.  Most parts are very short.  I’m not entirely sure what is happening as some details are left out.  However, the narrator is in a hotel.  She used to work for people who are now dead, and she is writing a letter to one of them.  The individual sections were rather compelling, although as a whole, I’m not sure what happened.

RODNEY ROTHMAN-”My Glorious Publishing Empire” including: “An Excerpt from The Rodney Rothman Holy Bible in Italics,” “Excerpt from The Rodney Rothman Underlined Holy Bible in Italics,” “Excerpt from The R. R. Underlined Holy Bible in Small-cap Outline Italics,” and “Excerpt from Rodney Rothman’s ‘Rollercoaster’”
This first piece describes Rothman’s attempts to get published via iBiblio and Xlibris.  Not just a book, mind you, but an empire!  So he takes the bible and prints them in the above mentioned styles. “Rollercoaster” is a pretty darn funny novel, excerpted here, and I wonder exactly what Xlibris thought of it.
None were accepted for publication.

PAUL COLLINS-”Solresol, The Universal Musical Language”
Paul Collins does it again.  He finds a mysterious figure and reveals all.  In this case, Francois Sudre.  In the 1820s, Sudre created a language based on the 12 notes of the musical scale. He shortened it to 4 notes for the military, but eventually settled on a simple 7 note language based on Do Re Mi So Fa Ti Do.  I won’t go into details because that is what the article is about, but suffice it to say that Sudre’s language was simplistic but very effective at allowing people with no common language to communicate through musical notes.  It also worked for the blind, deaf and mute (when he transferred it to a series of pressure points on the hand).  Sudre spent a fortune promoting his creation.  But despite praise from every corner of Europe, nothing ever came of Solresol.   There’s some info about Solresol here, as well as a Wikipedia entry here.  And a lengthy explanation of the grammar of Solresol here.

ALASTAIR REED-”From: Anecdotes”
An amusing one page anecdote.  This one is about Borges and his travels as a blind man around Buenos Aires.  It includes a very funny example of the blind leading the blind.

BEN GREENMAN-”My Hopes and Dreams”
This is a detailed look at the short piece that Greenman is currently writing.  He explains what he hopes to write, how long it took him to write what he did; his percentage chance of finishing the hoped-for story (20%) and of finishing this very piece (90%).  It is unclear if he actually finished it.  It is all very meta-.

CHAD WILLENBORG-”Soot”
A “real” short story.  This concerns a young man and his father.  They work at a crematorium.  They learn that Fr Don, a defrocked priest who left the church to open a record store and was generally quite cool, has died.  He is currently in their possession.  The story leads to the young narrator’s reminiscence of a dinner he had with Fr Don, wherein he discussed his reasons for leaving the church.  It’s quite a moving story.

LAWRENCE WESCHLER-”Convergences”
The first convergence is about Trees and Camera Obscura.   Camera Obscura is the technical method of putting a small hole in an object and having an image projected behind it turn out upside down. Often seen in a pinhole camera.  The trees are connected at the idea of how weird it would be to see a full sized tree upside down. I found this to be the least interesting Convergence.  However, there is a postscript about David Hockney who posits that Carrivaggio may have used this technique to paint his pictures (as there are no sketches or papers left from his ouvre.  This was fascinating and cool, and a somewhat subversive idea.

The second Convergence also relates to trees.  It concerns how the internet and our brain patterns (as well as family trees) use this basic layout of tree-ness to show branches and roots. It was very short, and was mostly theoretical, but it was cool (especially the pictures!)

R.J. CURTIS-”Solicitation”
This brief story concerns a woman who lives in a bad neighborhood where people come to her door to ask for money for crack.  It ends in a rather hazy way.

SUSAN MINOT-”This We Came to Know Afterward”
This is a horrifying non-fiction piece about abducted children, especially girls in Uganda.  The truth behind these poor girls’ lives of violence, rape and enslavement into a rebel military group is in a word, really really depressing.  Especially since nothing seems to get done about it.  A real eye-opener.

DANIEL O’MARA-”Letter to Hugh H. McColl, CEO of Bank of America,” “Letter to Robert G. Miller, CEO of Rite Aid,” “Letter to Peter I. Bijur, CEO of Texaco,” “Letter to Christopher M. Connor, CEO of Sherwin-Williams,” “Letter to David I. Fuentes, CEO of Office Depot”
These are all single page letters to these various CEOs.  Each letter is written from the pint of view of a dog.  In each letter the dog writes about how fast, how very very fast he is.  No replies are given.

PAUL LaFARGE-”The Observers”
This is the story that the introduction states is too normal for McSweeney’s.  And indeed, it is a pretty normal story (aside from the fact that the man builds an astronomical observatory in his backyard).  It is a very appealing story.  The man gets fired from his advertising job and leaves the city for the country. He moves back in with his father, in his boyhood home.  He has no plans, no ambitions, and feels uncomfortably like he did when he was a young boy.  The desire to build this observatory changes things. It gives him a plan and something manual to do.  He slowly becomes friends with the people in town, but once he sets his telescope on earthbound subjects, things in his life change dramatically.  This was a really cool story, simultaneously earthbound and fantastic.

LYDIA DAVIS-”Marie Curie, Honorable Woman”
In the letters section this piece is discussed between Lydia and the editors.  She explains the origin of the piece: Ms Davis was assigned to translate a “cute” biography of Marie Curie from French to English.  She selected several of the most awkward phrases and compiled a brief biographical sketch of Mme Curie.
I think a page or so would have gotten the point across.  As it is, it’s like reading a badly translated book or instruction manual (but it’s not funny like in English As She is Spoke.  I think if the story was translated into readable English it would make for an interesting biography, but as it is, its’ just sort of clunky.  I learned a lot about Curie, though.

PAUL MALISZEWSKI-News, Good and Bad (cover version of “In the Mechanical Age,” by Donald Barthelme)”
I have not read the Barthelme story, so I can’t comment on it.
This was a surreal story.  It begins with a man’s decision to read the newspaper every day, whether good or bad news.  It then morphs into a sort of prodigal son story.  The man’s son returns after many years away, and then spends 8 years in his room.  This morphs into a story about the dad working in Siberia creating action figures.  Your guess is as good (or better) than mine on this story.

STEVEN BARTHELME-”The New South: Writing the Newsweek Short Story”
This is a hilarious piece about Barthelme’s story for Newsweek. He assures us that he did a lot of research for the story and it is all true, except for…well just about everything.  He keeps backtracking about the truth of individual parts.  Very very funny.

BEN MARCUS-”Literary Enhancement Through Food Intake”
This may have been the most irritating piece of writing I have ever read.  In many ways it reminded me of the consuetudinary piece from Issue #31.  In this piece, Marcus describes the necessary diet and regime one must undertake to be, what, a good reader, a safe reader, I don’t know.  Through ten laborious and seemingly endless pages, Marcus goes into great detail of all manner of foolishness.  It is all done so seriously, including things like putting a language cloth in your mouth and reading aloud with only vowels that it loses all ounces of humor.  But it is so absurd that it can’t even be read as a mock-serious piece.  I actually had to read these ten pages in 4 separate attempts I found it so tedious.

ANN CUMMINS-The Hypnotist’s Trailer”
This was a totally surreal story.  I often wonder what goes into making stories that are just so divorced from reality.  In this one, a woman goes into a hypnotist’s trailer and, at the urging of the hypnotist, she removes her bellybutton.  The hypnotist morphs it from its small dying shape into a large floating peach, among other things.   Finally the woman’s daughter, bored by the shenanigans drags the woman out of the trailer while she freaks out about leaving her bellybutton behind.  In the epilogue the hypnotist talks to himself and laments his state.  The ending was a little unsettling but otherwise the story was very cool and trippy.

SARAH VOWELL-”Ted Koppel Interview Re Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations
A fascinating brief interview with Koppel.  It focuses almost exclusively on Aurelius’ Meditations and how it can apply to everything in life.  Koppel gave a copy to Bill Clinton who claims it is his favorite book).  Makes me want to check out Meditations myself.

J. ROBERT LENNON-”The Accursed Items”
I’m not entirely sure what to call this piece.  It consists of about twenty items.  Each item is given some backstory about how it has become accursed.  It is a surprisingly emotional piece, given that most items get no more than three lines.  In a way this could be flash fiction in that a fairly deep story is told with just a few lines.  It is available in audio format on This American Life.  Truth be told, the audio version is even more compelling than reading it.

ELIZABETH KLEMM-”Mr. Squishy”
This is now the third time I’ve read “Mr Squishy.”  I don’t recall where the first time was–it may have even been in this journal when it first came in, although I don’t think it was.  The second was when I read Oblivion some time ago, and now I’m doing it for the third time.

The third read is much better.  This is a difficult piece. The language is convoluted, the various plots overlap each other in awkward ways, and it is full to the brim of advertising jargon.  But once you understand that and you’re able to parse the language, it’s a mostly rewarding story.  I say mostly because although we pretty much know what is going to happen there are still one or two things left utterly unresolved.  And that’s a bummer.  To put in so much work and not get rewarded is kind of….

The plots include: a focus group learning about, and eventually commenting on the new snack food confection Felonies!  [In light of recent events, someone ought to make this snack food in memorium...it sounds delicious].  Schmidt is the man who is running this focus group.  While he is giving the presentation, he daydreams about a number of things including a) the woman in the office who he would love to get intimate with but who he is too afraid of to talk to b) how he would love to advance in his job but even an advancement wouldn’t be as satisfying as when c) he was younger and thought he could change the advertising world with his ideals (thinking about how Tylenol acted so swiftly to the cyanide scare of 1982) and d) how easy it would be to inject ricin into any Mr Squishy product after he had concocted some in the lab in his apartment.

The third(ish) plotline concerns the man who is climbing the outside of the building.  He has suction cups on his hands and feet (and head) and scales the outside of the building to the 18th floor (which is the floor on which the focus group are meeting).  He also has a shotgun.  This story is left unresolved as far as I can tell.

The confluence of stories is fueled by incredibly minute details and hyper-aware language of people’s behaviors, both in the room and in general.  It also zooms in on people’s tic and idiosyncrasies and shows a staggering knowledge of just about everything including physics, advertising jargon, and crowd behavior.

The insight into marketing, while certainly not new (as evidenced by the idea that the young men in the room are also savvy about marketing, is nevertheless, very detailed.  And, frankly far more informative than anything else I have seen.  I tend to trust this author when it comes to things like this, as it seem like once an idea is discovered, it is followed to the nth degree.  So yes, major fun in dissecting marketing.

It is an intense story, but careful reading is quite rewarding.[1]

COLLEEN WERTHMANN-”Hot Sex Story Lost in the Thicket of Humanity”
The title of this story tells the whole thing, even if it doesn’t seem to.  Basically, the story starts with a very sensual description of a young woman.  She is driving in her convertible, wearing short shorts with no underwear and a tank top with no bra.  She is heading to the grocery store. When she gets there she sees that the building is on fire. Firemen approach.  She recognizes one and starts talking with him.  He is very handsome, their eyes meet, and she can’t help but notice his muscular body.  They start talking about his brother whom she recalls from school.  And, basically the whole story proceeds like this, with sexy set ups that are undermined by reality.  Funny and frustrating.

JASON OCKERT-”Mother May I”
A disturbing story about a daughter getting pregnant.  At one point she is chained to a radiator.  But, as the story progresses, it clarifies itself a little more.  The pregnant woman’s mother is in a mental institution.  And, in the most interesting part of the story, the young girl brings balloons to her mother; they write notes on index cards and send the balloons up in the air.  As the mother deteriorates she stops writing altogether, she just doodles.  The daughter is convinced that the mother wants her a child, and as her final gift, she decided to get pregnant in the most repulsive way I can think of.  She goes to a park where kids have sex and…no I can’t say, you’ll have to read it.  A very sad tale, with moments of humor thrown in.

JOSHUAH BEARMAN-”Second Interview between Joshuah Bearman and His Father.”
I really enjoyed their first interview in the last issue.  This one is a discussion of water on Mars.  Bearman’s father is involved in what I believe has become the Mars Rover. It was unnamed in this interview, but it discusses going to Mars and taking samples (they assumed the mission would launch sometime in 2005).  The interview is casual and very funny with Bearman’s father getting exasperated about questions about Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still.  It is a rewarding and quite satisfying piece nonetheless.

[1] Yes, I am aware that this was written by David Foster Wallace.

For ease of searching I include: Husker Du

SOUNDTRACK

This EP was released hot on the heels on Viva La Vida. So hot, in fact, that since our copy of Viva was lost, I listened to this EP first.

If you absolutely love Viva La Vida, and wish it were longer, than this EP is perfect for you.  It has three remixes of songs from Viva.  I find the “Lovers in Japan [Osaka Sun Mix]” to be more satisfying that the original.  The opening track “Life in Technicolor ii” fleshes out the instrumental from Viva into a 4 minute song with lyrics.  And then there’s “Lost+” which tacks on an ill-fitting rhyme from Jay Z.

The rest of the disc is new songs in the vein of Viva.  They all contain that orchestral feel of the disc, especially “Glass of Water.”  Although the last track, “Now My Feet Don’t Touch the Ground” the a title that you would think would be over the top, is a more acoustic style ballad.

None of this is essential listening, but as a fairly cheap EP, it’s a not a bad addition to the Coldplay collection.

[READ: March 19, 2009] The Middle Stories

This seemed like it would be a fun little book. The cover (hand vandalized by Canadians, the website promised) has a photo of a man (see above). [In my picture, he is adorned in with a birthday hat, balloons and candles. I bought this from McSweeney's recently (for a $5 sale, I believe) even though it was one of their first published titles.

Heti has two stories in McSweeney's issues (#4 & #6), which are included here, but which I didn't remember from before.  And that's enough introduction. I really didn't like this short story collection at all. There was maybe three characters at the most who were sympathetic or at least were not reprehensible. In fact, the landscape that she describes, and the people who populate it are so alien to me that I can only hope that she made everything up and had no real experience of its contents. In fact, I  have a hard time imagining who enjoys these stories. Not "likes" them but "enjoys" them.

The title also seemed to be a little give away, because I absolutely hated the first half dozen or so stories, but once I got to the Middles ones, they started to get less icky.

The first seven stories were just so crass, so exploitative, so detached, that I was very tense, and a little dirty, reading them.  While I am very familiar and often comfortable reading crass work, I think it was the utter detachment from the lives of these people (most of whom don't even have names) that I felt so repulsed by.  A sample line from "The Poet and the Novelist as Roommates" :

She [a married woman visiting the titular men] closed the door and sat down beside him. She put the cigarettes in his hand. He looked at them dumbly. She wanted him to throw his leg across her, push her down on the bed, slap her and rape her hard.

I don’t even know what to say about that. But basically the book is full of characters who are negative, violent, unhappy and utterly ineffectual.

I really couldn’t wait to be done with the book.  So why did I keep reading? Well, the book was short, and I did pay for it.  Plus, with a short story collection, there’s the possibility that things will change in different stories.

And indeed, the stories where the characters are given actual names allow for a degree of humanity (even when they seem devoid of it themselves), and the shorter ones (about 4 pages) didn’t wallow in misery as much as the longer ones, which made them less despairing.

And the final story I read, “The Princess and the Plumber” gave the book some redemption. It was a longer story (10 pages) and it was full of despair and sadness, and the futility of a man longing for love, but it ended beautifully with a poetic flair that I didn’t see in any of the other stories.

The book blurb says, “The Middle Stories is a strikingly original collection of stories, fables and short brutalities that are alternately heartwarming, cruel and hilarious.” Please remove “heartwarming” (my heart was never ever warmed) and “hilarious” (you may get a smile or two, but never hilarity) and the truth will out: a strikingly original collection of stories and short brutalities that are cruel.

I really hope Shiela Heti isn’t as bummed as this book makes her seem, and I know I’ll be staying far away from her novel.

SOUNDTRACK

How do you follow up the fantastic Soft Bulletin?  If you’re The Flaming Lips, you simultaneously pull back and push forward.  I often thing of Yoshimi as Bulletin part 2 but that’s really not right or fair.  Yoshimi has a more Pink Floyd vibe: it’s quite mellow and folky.  But nothing the Lips do can be completely commercial, so you get things in every song that add immensely to the sound, yet prevent it from complete accessibility.

The opening song “Fight Test” begins with an ominous voice saying “The test begins…  NOW!!” with loud distorted crashes, and yet it quickly turns into one of their most delicate and catchy songs.  The only nod to peculiarity is the watery bass lines that fill the song.  It’s a mystery why this song wasn’t huge.

The next track, “One More Robot” is a delicate song reminiscent of Radiohead with the walking bassline and soft vocals.  This leads to the fabulous title track “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Ropbots Pt 1.”  In which yes, Yoshimi disciplines her body to take on the evil machines.  It’s another shoulda-been single, with strumming acoustic guitar and more of that fabulous fat bass. ” Pt 2,” on the other hand is a noisy cacophonous march depicting the fight.  It includes Yoshimi P-We from the Boredoms and OOIOO adding appropriate shrieks and screams.

Two more delicate songs follow: “In the Morning of the Magicians” is one of their longer songs and is quite mellow.  It also features a very lengthy instrumental section with more of that awesome bass.  “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell” is the most techno sounding song I can think of by the Lips.  It seems like maybe that touring work with Beck influenced them a bit.

“Are You a Hypnotist??” is a little louder and plays with the ascending chord progressions that Wayne does so well.   An uplifting track, with fun, interesting notes thrown in.  “It’s Summertime” has some great rubbery bouncing bass noises in the beginning, and it slowly morphs into a heavenly chorus.

The real highlight is “Do You Realize??”  It’ a song that goes from happy to sad to happy all in the space of a few lines.  But musically it is uplifting, with choruses and swelling orchestration.  I gather this was used for some ads, but I’m just surprised it wasn’t everywhere!

“All We Have is Now” is another delicate song, with gentle verses sung in an impossibly high falsetto.  The chorus is the most interesting part, with great bass notes interrupting the reverie.  The album ends with a gorgeous instrumental “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)” which is an apt title (Pavonis Mons being a volcano of Mars) and it sounds quite interstellar.

What’s most notable about this album is that there’s nothing that stands out as peculiar from the rest of the record (except “Yoshimi Pt 2″). It’s a very  constant record, mellow and comforting.  And yet I’m not going to call it safe, because it’s not.  I don’t know if it made as many critical lists as Bulletin, but I know it sold better, and it seems like a really good place to start for latter days Lips.

[READ: February 18, 2009] Never Mind the Pollacks

After reading several Pollack stories in McSweeney’s I discovered that he had written a novel. This novel.

With an awesome title! Most of the awesomeness is purely luck that his name is Pollack (Never Mind the Debraskis doesn’t have the same ring).

And with this novel Neal Pollack continues the grand mythologizing of Neal Pollack: figure of history, fantastic writer and now, most important person in rock and roll. In many ways Pollacks writing reminds me of 1990s wunderkind Mark Leyner. In Leyner’s books, especially the novel Et Tu Babe, there was usually a character called Mark Leyner who was a brilliant novelist and a steroided muscle head. In Pollack’s books, Neal Pollack is usually a god-like figure.  In this book, Pollack is a Zelig-like character who influences virtually every important development in rock n’ roll history.

When Pollack was seven or eight he met an old bluesman named Clambone. Music becames his life, and he left his prosperous Jewish family to follow music. Over the course of his life, he gives Elvis his first big break, then he meets Bob Dylan and becomes friends with him and Joan Baez (something of a love triangle develops there).

But he quickly tires of folk and moves on to New York. In New York he meets Andy Warhol and introduces Lou Reed to him. Pollack plays with the Velvet Underground until they kick him out for being such a drain on their band. He also met a young James Osterberg and essentially transformed him into Iggy Pop.

As the years pass, Pollack discovers punk, first N.Y. punk (he is an unofficial fifth Ramone) and then U.K. punk where he inspires Johnny and Sid to create a band. When he lands back in America he uncovers L.A. punk, getting beaten up at a Black Flag concert.  Eventually he meets Kurt Cobain, where he introduces him to indie rock (after trashing his Judas Priest collection) and Courtney Love.

Neal gets beaten up pretty much everywhere he goes (fist fights, buses and cars, even hitmen); he also scores and deals drugs to everyone and is just a mean, unpleasant asshole.  He is denied and degraded by everyone he has every helped or inspired and is treated like a mule or a pariah by everyone from the Rolling Stones to Henry Rollins.

And why, you may ask?  Because Neal Pollack is a rock critic.  But not just any rock critic, he is the greatest rock critic every to live (even though the only examples of his criticism in the book are “this sucks” or “they are the most important band in the world.”

Oh, and this story is Neal Pollack’s epitaph.  Because, indeed, Neal Pollack dies in the beginning of the book, and his life is recounted by his fellow critic (and nemesis) Paul St. Pierre.  St Pierre more or less trailed Pollack’s life, meeting up with him in various places throughout history, wishing he could be as respected as Pollack, and wishing even more that Pollack would stop sleeping with his wives.

St Pierre rehashes Pollack’s life both through memory and through interviews with the famous people that were impacted by Pollack.  Until the shocking climax, and peculiar ending.

Okay, but what of the book.  Well, it is quite funny, as you might imagine.  It also assumes you know and love music as much as Pollack (the author) clearly does.  In fact the more you love music history, the more humorous you will find the book. The book also moves along at a pretty brisk pace.  I finished it rather quickly.

However, I ultimately found the book to be rather insubstantial.  I know that it’s a parody, mocking everything from pompous critics to pompous bands, but I’m not really sure how effective the book is in that regard.  There are some very funny parts, some okay parts, and some fairly cliched parts.  On the other hand, I was afraid that the book would, like Pollack’ character, overstay its welcome, but the fast pace and constant traveling does really keep the book well-paced.

Probably my favorite part of the book was the Selected Discography at the back.  It contains super rare recordings with very funny annotations.  My two favorites are:

Joan Baez: Live at the Apollo. (Folkways 29402)  Essential listening for those who hate music.

If Courtney Hears That You’re Distributing This Nirvana Bootleg, She Will Hunt You Down and Kill You.  Someday we will defeat her.

Some other good ones:
Live at the Hippodrome. The worst recording ever made of a New York Dolls concert.  And that’ saying a lot.

We are Sonic Youth! Only to be released upon Thurston Moore’s death.

It’s also clear that Pollack loves his indie punk, as evidenced by these two items:

Tin Whistle. Fugazi EP 1988 (Dischord Records). Available only in very ethical record stores.

Pink Flag. Wire EP. The greatest album of all time.

If this sounds appealing, you’ll probably like it.

SOUNDTRACK

I had actually forgotten about this album, because it was so overshadowed by Truth and Soul and Reality….. When I put it on I wasn’t expecting much (Fishbone had something of a precipitous decline around this time).  So, I was amazingly delighted with how much I remembered this album and how much I enjoyed it (which shows to me that I must have listened to it a lot back in college).

This album is much much heavier than anything they’ve done up to this point (I can’t speak for the releases that came after it).  It does have some variety of songs, but not nearly as much as their previous releases.  The other notable thing is that there’s no short songs on it.  There’s none of the one minute songs that they’ve put throughout their discs.

“Swim” was the single from the album and it is heavy and moshy.  The video, I seem to recall, was a lot of people crowd surfing.  “Black Flowers” slows things down a bit, but unlike previous ballads, this one is still pretty loud.  It’s got a great catchy melody, but it’s still  quite dark. “Servitude” reminds me of some of King’s X’s s darker moments, with their riffs and dark harmonies.  (This just shows how Fishbone is much more metal on this release).  Their first “lighter” song is the return to ska with “Unyielding Condition.”  It’s a nice let up from the heaviness, and is still catchy. “Lemon Meringue” is the other lighter moment, with a nice bass riff included.

Funk returns with “Properties of Propaganda” and the repeated chants of “Fuk This Shit on Up.”  “The Warmth of Your Breath” is hardcore insanity, the type of song that would have been about 2 minutes on another disc sort of overstays its welcome, although the often repeated line “may your dog’s colon be familiar with the warmth of your breath” while barely audible can’t help but raise a smile.  And even though “Drunk Skitzo” features Branford Marsalis, it’s still too long for such silliness.

So, it’s really the first half of the disc that I liked a lot…I guess some discs run too long.

I never got a Fishbone CD after this one.   The reviews were pretty lousy by then.  But of course, the reviews of this one were lousy too, so maybe I’m, selling their later output short.

[READ: January 3, 2009] McSweeney’s # 29

My cover for this book happens to be red.  Huh.

This issue comes as a hardcover book.  There are planets on the cover, including a die cut hole that shows the moon of the next page.

On the bottom of every page of the book are matchbox labels.  Most of them are Eastern European in origin.  They were collected by Jane McDevitt, a web designer in the UK.  Some of the images are available on her Flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/maraid.  They are a pretty cool collection of images.  And, they brighten up all the work .

This was a good collection of stories, fourteen in all.  And so:

BRIAN BAISE-”It’s Nice When Someone is Excited to Hear from You”
This was an unusual story about a truly unpleasant character.  Roger had been working in San Francisco in an IT position.  He moved to Toledo, OH almost on a whim, and spends most of the story reminiscing. On a business trip he meets up with an old friend wherein his true nature is revealed.  There is one action in the story where I genuinely gasped.  An enjoyable story, but such an unlikable protagonist!

DAWN RYAN-”The Strauss House”
This was an interesting story about race and sexuality.  Barbara is a high school student.  As is her best friend Sam.  Barbara and her brother Steven were adopted by a white family, possibly because they are black.  Sam is a poor white girl who more or less moves in with Barbara’s family.  Barbara has matured sexually more quickly than Sam.  She convinces Sam that they should become intimate,  and the experiments have the expected result on their friendship.   What is particularly interesting about the mind games that are played is that the stakes are very high for Sam.  She has grown accustomed to many things in the Strauss house, and who knows how she’ll be able to cope if they are taken away.

NATHANIEL MINTON-”The Land of Our Enemies”
This was an interesting story that follows the lives of two men whose plane is about to crash in the rain forest.  One man, Peterson, a man of God, lands the plane.  He uses all of the materials on board and even the plane itself to build a small city.  He also quickly sets out to build a church.
Meanwhile, the other man, Freyman, an RAF soldier, jumped out of the plane.  He used the parachute to land safely.  However, after a few days, he is set upon by natives.  Their stories are told parallel.  Peterson, persuades some criminals (whose boat has crashed) to assist him in building his city.  Freyman survives the natives (in a gruesome scene) and convinces more and more of them to follow him.  As these two former plane-mates build their armies, their inevitable confrontation looms.  I really enjoyed this piece.

J. ERIN SWEENEY-”Augury”
This story has a woman returning from the Malay Peninsula believing that a common animal there would do well in the Pennsylvania forests.  The loris is a tree dwelling mammal who is easily frightened but who, if given the chance, will spout off aphorisms of wisdom.  After getting the loris imported, she finds that, like the kudzu in the south, they have begun to take over the community.  However, she learns that a chef has been trying to create delicacies from invasive plants/animals.   While the tension of whether the animals can be made into food isn’t the driving force of the story, it nicely compliments personal issues that the narrator is dealing with.  A fun, if unusual story.

PETER ORNER-”Kosciuszko”
Something of a reminiscence, this story gives a brief history of Tadeusz Kosciuszko.  But really, the story is about the narrator and his friend Barkus, who used to buy weed under the statue of Kosciuszko in Chicago’s Langley Park.  The narrator knows what happened to Koscciusko, but not what happened to Barkus.   And he ponders the possibilities.

JOHN THORSON-”Following a Lifetime of Fabrication, In the Wake of Decades at Sea”
A rather strange tale about the Mindfish, a creature that the narrator finds after years of believing he made it up.  As with most talking fish stories, this one just gets more surreal as it progresses.

LAURA HENDRIX-”A Record of Our Debts”
As this story opens, we learn that the narrator’s town is slowly coming down with a disease. The origins are unclear, but the townsfolk, looking for someone to blame, believe that it was the narrator’s sister, Selma, who caused the problem.  Symptoms are unspecific, but seem to be based around general dementia (Selma sits in the woodpile eating logs; Mrs Lemon, the store owner stops taking payment–which leads to the title–who is keeping a record of their debt at the store?)  It’s a good, chilling tale of scapegoating.

NELLY REIFLER-”History Lessons”
This story is fascinating.  It begins as a third person story of a couple lost in the woods.  Then, slowly it morphs into a  first person story.  The tale is actually being narrated by something or someone that the couple happened upon while lost.  It is never quite clear what this sentient/omnipresent being is.  This creature (and its child (?)) assist the couple out of the woods and then return home with them.  The story ends happily for the couple, but less so for the narrator.  I felt lost in the woods myself while reading this, but I was completely engrossed by it.  I’m still not sure what all was happening, but it was a cool story.

BLAZE GINSBERG-”My Crush on Hilary Duff”
The intro to this story explains that Blaze is a highly functioning autistic person, and he has been writing stories since he was 9.  As such, I feel bad saying anything negative about this piece.  It is written as a diary (or internet movie, it is suggested) about how he has a crush on Hilary Duff for two years.  It had moments of humor, but mostly was just like reading someone’s diary.

RODDY DOYLE-”The Painting”
There’s something about Roddy Doyle that makes me love everything he writes.  I don’t know what it is, but I’m never disappointed.  And this one is no exception, even when it gets kind of weird at the end.  So the basic story is that Adam, a Polish painter has moved to Ireland and is basically broke.  There’s some wonderful back story about how Adam loves Ireland because it doesn’t change…and he hates change, even down to the swirling leaves forever covering the sidewalk.  Through a complex series of steps, he meets Eve, a woman who lives nearby and whom he agrees to paint. She is a beautiful, straight talker.  He is intimated and that intimidation turns to love.  The purity of his love encourages him to do some questionable, but ultimately honorable acts.  It was quite a moving story, even if the ending surprised me.

BEN GREENMAN-”The Govindan Ananthanarayanan Academy for Moral and Ethical Practice and the Treatment of Sadness Resulting from the Misapplication of the Above”
This is the history of the karmic boomerang, a boomerang with 1 of 8 profound sayings written on it.  The piece is written as a historian’s look back upon the history of Govindan and the origin of his favorite phrase “How do you feel when the person who made you the saddest feels sad?”  A thought provoking little tale.

ERICA PLOUFFE LAZURE-”Cadence”
I admit to being a bit confused when the story revealed that the two people met in Basic.  Being a computer guy, I kept thinking it was some kind of Basic computing class.  Of course, many would have realized sooner that it was Basic training.  The tale comes across as a justification for dating your best friend’s girlfriend (and what the protocol is for servicemen).  Once i got it straightened out, it was  good story.

YANNICK MURPHY-”Calls”
This story is a series of entries.  Each series begins CALL: In which the traveling farm veterinarian (is there a word for this) details what his visit was for.  Then there is ACTION: where he describes what he did.  The next is RESULT: in which we learn the success of his visit.  The first few entries also contain THOUGHTS ON DRIVE HOME, WHAT THE CHILDREN SAID TO ME WHEN I GOT HOME, and WHAT THE WIFE COOKED FOR DINNER.   The notes are somewhat mundane, albeit funny, (especially the entry that has WHAT THE WIFE MADE FOR DINNER and a separate entry WHAT I ATE FOR DINNER), until the spaceship arrives on his front lawn.  This story went from okay to great in a matter of just a few pages.

JOYCE CAROL OATES-”Labyrinth”
This story was placed on the inside back cover of the book.  It is written in a large square spiral with the story winding its way to the center.  It is also a very short story.  It concerns N. who is afraid of being buried alive.  Of course, my telling you that pretty much tells you where the story is going.  It’s a fun journey though.  One of Oates’ dark stories.

I’ve liked Mars Volta more in theory than in actuality for their first few albums. I enjoyed them, but they didn’t make me want to listen all the time. I had heard good things about this new one, so I gave it a shot and WOW. The Bedlam in Goliath is off the charts in its craziness and its masterfulness.

Bedlam has most of the same components of a Mars Volta disc: chaos, noise, fantastic instrumentation, bizarre lyrics, jazz-like elements and metal, sweet metal. But for some reason, Bedlam seems to cohere into a masterful project. I haven’t listened to the first two discs in a while (but I’m sure going to check them out again), and I never got the third one, so I can’t really compare them. This one just seems to have something special to it.

The overall sound makes me think of someone tuning in a radio. Some parts are (deliberately) fuzzy, some are crystal clear. As the sound of one segment fades out a new, entirely different section blares in. Anyone who channel surfs can appreciate the sound of this.

All of the literature about this record talks about their use of a Ouija board during their tour and while recording. They bought it in Jerusalem and they say it had a horrible impact on the recording process. (Check out this NPR story…yeah, that’s right, I said NPR.) And, in many respects, rather than a radio, you could think of the album as the voices and sounds from the Ouija board coming through. Some are crystal clear and other are mechanized and ghostly. Spooky, eh?

But what of the music? It is fast, fast, fast. Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s voice is a powerhouse of high-pitched, operatic notes. And the music keeps pace. And yet, despite the speed the album isn’t thrash metal or speed metal necessarily. It doesn’t all have that heaviness, it just has a lot of speed. It lets up once in a while, but for the most part in every song something is going fast: drums, bass, voice, something.

One of the perplexing things about the record is how each song seems to have multiple parts that are unrelated to each other…some songs even have longer breaks within the track than between them. For instance, tracks one and two, the nearly 6 minute “Abernikula” and the over 8 minute “Metatron” blend seamlessly into one long track. However, midway through “Metatron” the song stops for a good second or two and then begins with a brand new, wonderfully catchy riff, which runs through the rest of the song. Truly masterful, and yet impossible to know what track you’re on, half the time.

The album is about an hour long, and it’s such a roller coaster of rocking guitars and high speed chases.  And yet it doesn’t wear out it’s welcome, because the catchy bits are so incredibly catchy. I was amused to see that there is a “single” on the record called “Wax Simulacra.”  It’s the shortest song, possibly that MV has ever done at under 3 minutes, which makes it an ideal single.  Except that the last twenty or thirty seconds are taken up with a mind blowing saxophone solo that could be lifted from Ornette Coleman or John Zorn (and this is a single?).  In fact, the horns come into play a lot on the record.  There’s one or two motifs that sound like they could be taken from a Zappa piece (the Zappa song “Sofa” kept popping into my head during this record. And you can’t ask more from a record than to make you enjoy it while it makes you think of other great music too.

[READ: July 20, 2008] Do the Windows Open?

I read an interview with Julie Hecht in The Believer (some of which is available here). And boy did she come across as an unlikable person. She seemed to just despise everyone and everything in contemporary society. Now I can relate to that at times, but she just seemed so reclusive and awful…exactly the kind of person you wouldn’t want to befriend. But as she talked about her writing, and as the interviewer brought up different aspects, it sounded like she was a very meticulous, very exacting type of writer. And I thought: even if she’s a horrible individual, her writing sounds like it would be very good.

And so it was.

This collection of short stories reads like a novel, in that the main character is the same, and each story is like an episode in her life. The only thing that prevents it from being a novel is there is no overall “plot” to her life, just a series of incidents. Hence: short stories. All of these stories were originally published in the New Yorker, which should give some indication of their quality.

The main character is never named, although what we know about her is that she is Jewish, and her last name can be pronounced one of two ways (German or not). She is a vegan, afraid of highways, and basically thinks the world has gone to hell. She is very critical of pretty much every person she encounters, whether he is on the bus, or in line around her.  In fact, given the interview, I would assume that the author and the main character are very similar.

Each story presents itself as a snapshot of her life. The first is a letter to her sister. It is a long drawn out tale about how she is convinced that the man who makes their eyeglasses is a Nazi, or at least a sympathizer, and she should keep that in mind when she goes to buy a pair next. But it’s the rest of the stories that create the bulk of her life. She is a photographer, and she is bent on getting a great shot of “world famous physician” Dr. Loquesto  and his dog. She also imagines the various series of great photos she could be taking…physicians and their dogs, photos from Walden Pond, and the houses the Anne Sexton has lived in, among others. The doctor, ( a reproductive surgeon) who was previously her own physician, and is remarkably insulting and demeaning to her, never “feels” like posing. Even when she goes all the way to his house (in unbearable heat, where his windows are closed) he just watches TV and won’t let her shoot him.

Every story mentions this physician, and his world famous nature. Every story also mentions the fact that she eats only macrobiotic food (upon hearing this the doctor says, “Well, that explains it”) and that she believes everybody else should as well. So, when she goes to a Swedish friend’s house (where all they eat is, basically meat and dairy) she brings her own salad to eat (which no one else touches).

And every story seems to go like this. She is offended/confused by someone or something. In one story she lives in fear of her bus ride on the highway. It goes into great detail about the bus ride and everyone on it.  The bus ride also leads to the title of the collection, as she wonders if the windows on the bus open.  She typically believes that the other person or situation is wrong. She is often on the verge of telling them so, but she never musters the courage. We hear all of her innermost thoughts, in which we realize how outside of society she must be. This tends to make her simultaneously the most naive and the most offensive character I’ve read in a long time. She really is quite unpleasant in her attitudes.

Sarah asked me why I would continue to read stories about a person that I disliked so much. And the answer is that, despite her unlikability, the stories are quite funny. Either because of what she thinks but doesn’t say or what happens at her expense. But it is a very dry humor.  Plus, they are written very very well. In the interview, Hecht says she does nothing but edit, edit, edit, and when she submits them and sees them in print, she wishes she could edit some more. And that’s how the stories are: tight, fully packed and sardonically funny.

I’m intrigued enough to want to read more by her, but I think I need to take a little break first. Although now I see she only has two other works: The Unprofessionals (a novel) and a brand new collection of short stories called Happy Trails to You.  Evidently, both works all feature the same narrator.  I can’t tell if this is limiting or if it will just strengthen her writing and make these other stories even better.  I’ll soon find out.

Since the author of one of the stories below is the singer in this band, I thought I’d listen to them and see what they were all about. With a name like that I was expecting some kind of hardcore band. And that is NOT this band! They don’t have a record out yet, but they have some songs on MySpace here. The first song “Sometime Around Midnight” made me think of a couple of bands from the 90s: The Church and Midnight Oil, and possibly The Alarm. The vocals are mixed loudly in the mix, and there is an earnestness about the vocals which made me think of those bands. The second one, “Papillion” has a keyboard solo (!) over some fairly raucous simple melodies. The third song “This is Nowhere” is a fun indie rocker with a good staccato riff and a cool/spooky chorus harmony. And the fourth song “Innocence” was rocking and bouncy. I can’t get over the use of keyboards on songs where you wouldn’t expect them. I enjoyed these songs quite a bit, and will certainly check out the CD when it’s released.

[READ: May 30, 2008]: McSweeneys #27

This volume contains three books in a slipcase. Even though each is a small paperback, the overall package is quite nice. The slipcase has many tiny holes in it to look like skyscraper windows (or Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti).

The first volume is by Art Spiegelman and is called Autophobia. I first came to know Art Spiegelman, as did most everyone, I’m sure, through his fantastic graphic novel Maus. He was my introduction to comics, and my realization that comics could be more than superheroes. Spiegelman can do very little wrong in my eyes.

Now he does a lot of covers for the New Yorker. I’m not really sure what he does with the rest of his time. But this little book certainly sheds some light on things. As Spiegelman explains in the intro, this is essentially a notebook that he kept from March to May 2007. He had a sort of artist’s block, so he decided to draw every day, anything that came to his head, with the knowledge that no one would see it or say anything about it. And now he’s decided to let us see into his head. It’s a fun collection of doodles, half ideas, bad puns, and every manner of item. Some things of note: his doodling style is so much less streamlined than his art (which I suppose is to be expected) but I’m surprised by how heavy his lines are. It’s also funny to see the random things that pass through artists’ heads: sex and death mostly. It’s a pretty neat book to have, and a good idea for any artist to just start scribbling every day to see what comes out.

The second volume is called Lots of Things Like This. It is basically a collection of art that has pictures with words. The booklet originally accompanied a show at the apexgallery in NY, but for this volume it has been expanded to include many more artists. The collection is all over the place, as you might expect of a booklet of some 34 artists. Some are well known (Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Shel Silverstein, Leonard Cohen, Rene Magritte), some were known to me already (Raymond Petttibon, who has done some great indie rock covers in the past) and some were new to me (Quentin Miller, Jay Howell). It’s an interesting look at how most people assume that picture + word = cartoon, when in these cases, it equals more (not that cartoons aren’t substantial). It also raises some funny questions about people writing on their own work. As with the Speigelman piece, it’s hard to say much about them because for me, it’s hard to talk about visual art without going into either great detail or wanting to look at every piece.

The third volume is where the fiction lies. Overall, I was a little disappointed with the collection. Not because of the quality of the work, which was quite good, but because of the content. It was a rather creepy/disturbing collection of stories, with ones about: murder, pedophilia, excrement, lots and lots of excrement, abusive in-laws, and graveyards. Not a happy bunch, these authors.

LARRY SMITH-”Tight Like That”
This story was about an astonishingly offensive character named Louie who is portrayed as something of an adorable lout. He is a gangster and a thug, and his basic modus operandi is to, well, whip it out in front of women to try and impress them with his size. He has no trouble scoring with women until he meets a library worker whom he (understandably) freaks out with his behavior. Somehow he wins her over and they become an item. In the end, her demeanor is proven to be false, not because she suddenly takes off her glasses and is a sex kitten, but because of her own sketchy past. It’s weird to be intrigued and repulsed by a character at the same time

JIM SHEPARD-”Classical Scenes of Farewell”
Speaking of repulsive…. This story follows the life Gilles de Rais a Frenchman who once fought with Joan of Arc, and then exposed his rather evil side: he was a pedophile who murdered the children he kidnapped. The main character is a victim of de Rais who was spared and made his acolyte. Although not as gruesome as it might have been, (we’re spared the torture porn) it’s still a pretty horrific story. And yet, it is written so well (in a style and language appropriate to the time) and the actual storyline is very compelling: will de Rais be caught? will our protagonist be spared? how guilty is he as an accomplice? It’s a fascinating look at depravity, and I couldn’t put it down.

ASHLEE ADAMS-”Bird Feed”
Why are all stories about women in the South so damned depressing. This story is no exception. It is very well written, a tight story about a woman who, upon hearing of the death of her Grandma, seems to be loosened form the bounds of her own life, and seeks to commune with her. Cora’s existence is pretty bleak: married to a guy she doesn’t really like, her mother-in-law is openly disdainful of her, her young son only listens to her husband, not to her. Oy! She meets a man she has contacted through email Christmas Eve. She leaves her family and drives to the man’s place. This section of the story was a bit mystical and it lost me somewhere. The ending was kind of sweet. Not what I was expecting, but still depressing.

LIZ MANDRELL-”Sod Turned Spring”
I was rather sleepy while I read this story; it didn’t help that the story is practically exuding hallucinogens. There are several characters. One works in a cemetery, and, as I said I was confused, I think there are two other main characters who are not the guy who works in the cemetery. The story seems to alternate with every paragraph. But the gist seems to be that people are going on a tour of the graveyard that contains Jim Varney, ie Ernest of Ernest Goes to Camp fame. Trippy but unsatisfying.

MIKEL JOLLETT-”The Crack”
I had been a little down on this issue. I hadn’t really gotten into any of the stories, and then came this one. This story was fantastic and I can only hope that there will be more about these characters or that it’s part of a novel. The story follows four Loz Feliz, CA, young people all of whom are dying (cancer mostly) and who bond despite their disparate background and interests. There’s Margaret, there’s General Major, there’s Dig, and there’s the narrator. General Major is easily the most fascinating character. In my favorite part he coins a new letter…a TH with the top of the T creating the bar of the H and he calls it “Thaitch” (it was from some grafitti he had seen). And that’s just how the narrator first met him. The story concerns a giant crack in the road of a major street of Los Feliz. The foursome gather their spelunking gear (so to speak) and decide to investigate this gigantic crack/sinkhole. As they dive in and discover a gigantic expanse of darkness, they become, obviously, very intrigued. Eventually some neuroses come to light. And, as they proceed further into the cave, they see some extraordinary things. It was a wonderfully paced and highly compelling story. I’m looking forward to reading more by him. The author is the singer for The Airborne Toxic Event, whose band I reviewed above.

STEPHEN KING-”A Very Tight Place”
I have a theory that if you or I started a literary magazine, Stephen King would send it a story. He is so prolific that he seems to send stories everywhere. Nevertheless, I am somewhat surprised to see him in a McSweeney’s publication.
When I was a kid, I loved Stephen King. I read everything he wrote right up to The Tommyknockers, which seemed to lose me. (After reading On Writing, it turns out that he doesn’t remember writing much of the books from this era because he was so high, which may go some of the way to explaining why i didn’t like Tommyknockers. Sometime around there I also decided that I shouldn’t be reading Stephen King if I was going to be a lit major, so I haven’t read anything by him since. Except, as I said, his memoir, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which I really liked.
Reading this story reminded me of why I liked King so much…his stories are effortless to read. I theorize as well that if he could, he would write in his sleep, stories just seem to flow from him so easily.
This story is about two men who live on Turtle Island in Florida. They both covet a piece of property at the end of the island: one wants it so that he can leave it unmolested, the other wants it so he can build a development on it. They have a protracted lawsuit that has gone on for years. The tensions have finally reach boiling point when Curtis’ dog is electrocuted (deliberately?) by Grunwald (aka The Motherfucker). But that information is more or less incidental to the centerpiece of the story. In the bulk of the story, Grunwald (the one who wants to build on the property) seeks revenge on Curtis (who has blocks his every turn). Grunwald owns a derelict construction site. He lures Curtis out to it and….well, I’m not going to say because I don’t want to give it away, and I’m not sure I have the stomach to revisit it. However, it is one of the most revolting things I can imagine doing to someone. And, since Curtis is the protagonist, you imagine living it with him. I think I may never have read a story that was more gross. And yet, I simply could not stop reading. I am shocked at how much I enjoyed this thoroughly disgusting story. And it makes me want to read more Stephen King again.

So, it was really these last two stories that brought this collection of fiction up to a higher grade for me.

SOUNDTRACK:

Ah, the delights of Marillion. My best friend in high school, Al, got me into Marillion. And he started me off with this record. As such, I can’t imagine how I could realistically critique it. I must have listened to this thing hundreds of times at this point. I also got into the other Marillion albums (until the theatrical madman and lead singer, Fish, departed). I did get one post-Fish album, Season’s End, but didn’t think too much of it. Although I still regard them highly, and anyone who names an album Anoraknaphobia is still alright in my book, I haven’t heard a note of anything post-Season’s End.

Fugazi, on the other hand is still fantastic after all these years. Fish’s lyrics are often bitter, but always eloquent. It always veers towards pretention, but I think pulls away just before it sinks into it. There are some really terrific extended pieces on this record, especially the title track, which is truly amazing. And, there are some really great catchy melodies. But it’s always the lyrics I come back to; I often find some circulating in my brain at opportune moments (“I am the assassin, with tongue forged from eloquence” “On the sacrificial altar to success, my friend” “Oral contraceptives aborting pregnant conversation” “unsheathe the blade within the voice”). Marillion is definitely one of my go-to bands, especially if I’m feeling prog-rocky. And their first 4 albums are really great.

A few years ago they re-released all of the Marillion albums with a bonus disc of songs each. On the spine of each one was a letter spelling out M-A-R etc. My friend Lar noted that everyone’s collection would only every spell MARI. I did one better by getting MARIL (the L being the live album The Thieving Magpie), but otherwise he was spot on.

Curiously, I have never gotten an Fish solo records. When they first came out they were all expensive imports, and now I kind of don’t care anymore. I wonder if they’re any good?

[READ: September 26, 2007] An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England.

What a weird, strange, funny book. There was something a little unsettling for me about the tone of the book, from start to finish, because it was kind of funny and then decidedly not funny, and then sad, and overall, rather full of meaning.

The story follows Sam Pulsifer a young man arrested for (accidentally, he says) burning down the Emily Dickinson house, which is just a few blocks from his own house. The story of how and why he did this (which he definitely did) is told throughout the course of the book (parenthetical asides included).

The book is full of deceptions, from the lies that Sam tells his wife (basically everything about his past), and the lies that his parents have told him (the disappearance of his father when he was a child and their current status as working adults), to the lies that strangers tell Sam as he tries to solve the mystery of who is trying to burn down other New England writers’ homes. And there are other lies as well, lies that the bond analysts who Sam meets in prison tell him (and the lies they eventually put in their memoirs), and even the lies that Sam puts in the two books that he writes in prison, both of which are called An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, one of which is a memoir and the other a novel.

This is why I marked the book as unreliable narrator. Sam Pulsifer lied to his wife about the Emily Dickinson house (or, shall we say, failed to tell her). He then becomes something of a compulsive drunk (Knickerbocker beer should have paid for all of the advertising it gets!) And, finally, as the “meta” part kicks in and he talks about what he is going to write in his book(s) An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, some of which is in here, and some of which is maybe, going to be in here, perhaps.

But really, the book is all about loving and hating reading. Loving to read, but hating the artifice that books reveal and cover up. There is wonderful insight into how much books can reveal about you and your loved ones even if on the surface they would appear to have nothing to do with you.

And, of course, Clarke has pegged the general tenor of society so well, with wry observations about McMansion housing developments, bars that look crappy on the outside but feel homey on the inside, nostalgia for snow, the beauty of New England, the falsity of memoirs, the social settings of bookstores, going to author events, and ultimately, how we can love someone with all of our hearts and yet still not tell them the whole truth about our sordid past.

I guess I’m a little confused at the rave reviews the book is getting. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did, but I’m confused about what our zeitgeist is these days that this book is pushing reviewers’ buttons so much.

Having said that, I didn’t want to put the book down, and I really consumed it quickly. The pacing was great, the main character, although rather unlikable, was still compelling, perhaps because of, rather than in spite of, his bumbling nature. I’m not sure if one feels sympathy or pity or what for Sam, and perhaps that is what I find disconcerting about the book: I couldn’t decide how I felt about Sam.

Even as the book closes–with loose ends tied up nicely–and you can see what is going to become of his life, it’s still hard to know how to feel about him. He comes off as a blank slate, in which others are reflected off of him. Maybe I was disconcerted by how I saw myself.

THE ATARIS-So Long, Astoria. I am only reviewing this CD because of the circumstances in which I acquired it. Driving out of my driveway this morning, I was surprised by a shiny thing in my lawn. It turned out to be a CD. This one. Indeed, someone had thrown this CD out of their car (I assume) onto my lawn. [Later inspection uncovered two more CDs, one by a band I didn't recognize and the other a burned CD with no writing on it... I can't WAIT to see what it is!] So, anyhow, I had not heard the Ataris before, but had heard of them. And the record is okay. It’s sort of generic pop punk, meaning it is really catchy and fairly fast and I probably would have loved it if I were 18. Or maybe 16. This also features the cover of “Boys of Summer” that I remember hearing on the radio oh so many years ago. The only distinguishing feature of the song is they change the lyrics to a “Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac.” Otherwise, not much else of note.

I’m sort of amazed at how many bands there are that sound like this, which leads me to believe that this kind of music must be easy to write. And yet, it seems like all of this kind of music should just be huge sellers. I mean, I’m half way through a 2:30 song, and I already know the chorus and what the next verse will sound like. It’s so easy to play along to, shouldn’t it be easy to write as well? I dunno. I’m also not sure what I’m going to do with the disk when I’m done, maybe I’ll toss it to someone else.

THE STARTING LINE-Say It Like You Mean It. Speaking of this kind of music, the other CD I mentioned above turned out to be this one by The Starting Line. This is similar to the Ataris in that it’s a poppy punk album. It seems effortlessly happy, as opposed to the usual tormented lyrics that bands like this usually have. I liked the music a little better than the Ataris because it was a little grittier and a little less obvious, but only a little. Of the two, this one wins, but not by much.

Sadly, the third disk was a collection of hip hop, mostly Dr. Dre produced acts. After the third song which said “bitch” about 75 times, I gave up.

[READ: May 2007] McSweeney’s #21

As part of my ongoing McSweeney’s reading, I enjoyed Issue #21 very much. As I have said before, I love Roddy Doyle’s work, so any more that I can get from him is always welcome. I have a tenuous connection to Roddy Doyle which is so tenuous as to be nonexistent, but it still makes me root for him all the more. My college roommate was from Ireland, and he had been taught Literature by Roddy Doyle just before he wrote his first book, The Commitments. As I say, no real connection at all, but it was still neat to know a guy who knew a guy….

The gimmick of #21 is that the inside cover folds out to make the book look like a box, or one continuous piece of art. Fun! The other gimmick, if I can call it that is that each story is followed by a letter from a different person to Ray Charles dated from 1999. They are a strange amalgam of letters, all genuine, and all typically asking Ray for assistance. They are all very amusing. Overall, the issue was a good one. Lots of solid stories and only a few clunkers.

CHLOE HOOPER-”The Tall Man”
I took this story to be factual for a good solid part of it. It is written so much as a matter of record, that I assumed it was true. It concerns the situation of aboriginals in Australia, and their inherent second class citizen status when it comes to the white police officers. A very depressing story.

STEPHEN ELLIOTT- “Hate to Be Alone”
A psychosexual story about a married woman having an affair with a man and how they must breakup after spending four glorious (but really not) days together having kinky sex and rehashing their time together.

RODDY DOYLE-”The Pram”
This story strays from the school stories that Roddy does so well. He has, of course, moved onto more mature subjects since his days of writing funny books, and this is one of those more mature stories. It focuses on Alina, an immigrant to Ireland who minds O’Reilly (the mother)’s children. O’Reilly is a hard woman who distrusts Alina and who takes her children’s side of the story whenever they say Alina did something wrong. Alina gets her revenge by telling the children the story of a haunted pram, which she makes up on the spot. The children grow increasingly terrified, but the real fright happens in Alina’s mind as she grows ever more concerned for the actual baby she is supposed to be minding in the pram. It gets very dark in this little world.

RAJESH PARAMESWARAN-”The Strange Case of Doctor Rajan Gopalarajan”
This was a funny, if not disgusting, story about Manju who becomes convinced that he can become a doctor after reading manuals in the library. His wife is used to a quality lifestyle, so he cannot tell her when he gets fired from CompUSA. He invents a life as a doctor, primarily looking after illegal immigrants near the Mexican border. When his first surgery goes horribly awry, and his wife hears of the fabulous “Rajan Gopalarajsn” (Manhu’s assumed name) through a mutual friend, parallel stories meet in a bloody climax.

MIRANDA JULY-”Majesty”
A funny short story about a woman’s fantasy obsession with Prince William and all the inappropriate things she’d like to do with him. Sadly, it takes a dark turn when the story morphs into the hunt for a lost dog. I enjoyed the first part much more.

ARTHUR BRADFORD-”Snakebite”
A very funny story about three people on the way to an outdoor wedding, who pick up a man who was bitten by a snake. The drunken victim winds up causing a huge scene at the wedding. The people offended by this behavior are pretty unlikable which makes the proceedings all the more funny.

YANNICK MURPHY-”The Lost Breed”
A brief story of a group of people on a doomed mission in search of Mucuchies. However, because of their wholly inappropriate vehicles (Cadillacs instead of Jeeps), they cannot get into the woods where they believe these dogs are. Because they have been turned away form their goal, they wind up going to a far less treacherous area and spying a lek of Cocks of the Rock, the rarest bird in the country. When they return home, this news provokes jealousy from those who had Jeeps and found nothing deep in the heart of the jungle. A funny and unusual story. It was not until the last page that I realized the narrator was a woman.

A. NATHAN WEST-”The Balloon”
An odd story about parents growing old and how children deal with it.

HOLLY TAVEL-”Last Words”
A fantastic (in both senses of the word) story about a hyacinth macaw who tells his new owner about his illustrious past, and how unacceptable he finds his current living situation. The owner, at first skeptical, becomes convinced of the bird’s story and rearranges his life to please the bird.

GREG AMES-”I Feel Free”
A weird and funny story about a fellow who is dating a woman being stalked by her ex. Eventually, the ex begins moving his stuff into the fellow’s house. The ex is a scary man with one weakness, which the fellow gets to exploit. This all takes places to the pulsing rhythms of Cream’s “I Feel Free.” Great stuff.

KEVIN MOFFETT-”Serenade”
A man fantasizes about the relationships he has had with the anonymous women on the street. A slight story but interesting nonetheless.

PETER ORNER-”Pampkin’s Lament”
A sad tale about Mike Pampkin who agrees to run in a no-chance-to-win election, and the consequences that befall him. A moving story.

CHRISTIAN WINN-”Rough Cut”
This story has stayed with me for quite some time, possibly because I keep seeing Mormons in entertainment lately. At any rate, the story concerns a guy who tries to prove his mettle by beating up a couple of Mormons walking down the street. He is utterly shocked when he finds out the Mormon can defend himself. The visuals in this story were really strong, and I still imagine it when I see stereotypical Mormons on TV.

JOYCE CAROL OATES-”Grandpa Clemens & Angelfish 1906″
A weird story about Grandpa Clemens (Mark Twain) and his relationship with his Angelfish (young girls under the age of 14 whose company he enjoys, often to the chagrin of their parents.) I was relived to see in the postscript that this was a work of fiction, but disturbed to find that it has basis in fact. It makes Clemens seem like a dirty old man regardless of his intentions. A very compelling read, and yet another JCO story I won’t forget soon.