I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: LUTHER WRIGHT AND THE WRONGS-Rebuild the Wall (2001).

I first heard Luther Wright on an episode of Robson Arms, a weird, funny show on CTV in Canada. They were playing “Broken Fucking Heart” a fabulous country-punk song. So, I had to find out more about this guy, and it turns out he did a country-punk, but mostly country, version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It was with much trepidation that I dared into this most unusual of covers, because I don’t really care for country, particularly, shudder, new country. But, wow am I glad I did.

It’s hard to know even where to start, but it is amazing how well the songs translate into a country motif. I’ve loved Pink Floyd’s The Wall ever since it came out. I have very fond memories of reading the lyrics on the record sleeve when I bought it back in 1979, sitting in the back of my mom’s car as she drove myself and my aunt back from the mall. And, I have a fond memory of the resurgence that it had for me in college when evidently every angsty boy in my dorm felt the need to play it ritually.

I was prepared for the worst, but I never had any regrets of this cover version. I’ve even played it to friends who’ve thought it was really good as well. It all sounds like a joke, but the musicianship is top-notch (Sarah Harmer is back with great backing vocals), and the appreciation of the original is evident from the start. I encourage you to track down this album if you like the original. Give Luther some of your cash!

[READ: August 20, 2007] In Persuasion Nation.

This completes my recent spate of books that I read about somewhere, and can’t remember where. I maintain that it was in The Week by a former Simpsons’ writer, but I have to wait about a month before that issue gets online so I can confirm it (boo!). At any rate, I was led to believe that this was going to be a book of funny essays. And, well, it’s not. It skewers contemporary society, and it has moments that are definitely funny in a hmmmm, sort of way, but laugh-out-loud funny this is not.

And yet, so much of the promotional material implies that you will be laughing constantly. The other strange thing about this collection is that the stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and McSweeney’s, four periodicals that I read all the time. But, somehow I hadn’t read any of these stories before, although some seemed vaguely familiar. [Upon checking dates, I see that I wasn’t regularly reading these magazines when the stories were published in them.]

So, the stories themselves. The first one “I Can Speak” was so clearly a short humorous New Yorker piece (you can tell by the length, and by the one trope that I dislike most about these short funny pieces: they are short but not short enough). It’s a really funny idea, but in the whole ‘please fill three pages” thing, it comes up about a page too long. But it is funny. “My Flamboyant Grandson” also seems very New Yorker-y to me. I like the idea that he plays against the title somewhat to skewer modern consumerism. “Jon” also reacts wonderfully against consumerism and mass marketing.

The thing about these three stories is that they are very dark and obviously very satirical about our consumerist society. And yet, they are more thoughtful than funny. I keep harping about the funny because I feel like I’m supposed to be laughing wildly at this collection, and I’m really not.

The story that really blew me away was “Red Bow.” A story that, I assure you, is not funny at all. Nor is it meant to be. I really hated this story as I was reading it. A questionable narrator and lots of animal killings. It is a hugely allegorical story, and I didn’t get the allegory until the last couple of pages of it, when it hit my like a ton of bricks and I just thought, “Wow, that was really good.” I don’t want to spoil the allegory, but don’t be put off by the senseless killing of animals, as I almost was.

It’s in the last couple of stories, “Brad Corrigan, American” and “In Persuasion Nation” that Suanders gets very surreal, but also makes his points more obviously. “Brad Corrigan” is a good satire of TV and ratings, from the point of view of a TV character. “In Persuasion Nation,” a story I remember reading in Harper’s, is a totally bizarre story from the point of view of characters and products in TV ads. As for this one, I’m not sure if its supposed to be funny, there’s some funny bits and wonderfully imagined scenes, but funny? Sometimes.

[UPDATE: I just learned that Saunders has a non-fiction essay collection coming out called The Braindead Megaphone. I am actually quite interested in reading this. I feel like Saunders’ style would suit non-fiction very well, and that I’d enjoy that much more. Maybe what was missing for me from this collection was that it was true without fact.]

Overall, I have sort of a mixed opinion of the book. I hesitate to say I didn’t like it, because I not only read all of it but vividly recall some of the scenes. However, I didn’t feel like talking about it to anyone, and it took me a week or so to write about it because I didn’t have that much of a reaction to it. I can say that I definitely appreciated what he was doing, but it didn’t make me want to run out and read other things by him.

• “I CAN SPEAK!^TM“
• “My Flamboyant Grandson”
• “Jon”
• “My Amendment”
• “The Red Bow”
• “Christmas” — Original title: “Chicago Christmas, 1984”
• “Adams”
• “93990” — Originally published as Part IV of “Four Institutional Monologues”
• “Brad Carrigan, American”
• “In Persuasion Nation”
• “Bohemians”
• “CommComm”