I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE FUTUREHEADS-News and Tributes (2006).

I enjoyed the first Futureheads album very much when it came out, but I balked at getting this sophomore release because they were part of that whole new angular-rock wave, and I didn’t want to stay caught up in the hype. Well, I relented because I’d continued to hear good things about this record, and I’m glad I did.

For me, The Futureheads sound like The Jam, mixed with a little Gang of Four edginess in their chords, and most intriguing of all, a bit of Queen in their vocals. This odd mix is totally up front in the second song, “Cope”. A choppy guitar, a voice that sounds like the Paul Weller and then at the end of the first line, all the guys sing the word Go! in a 4 part harmony that sounds partially machine-like; I almost thought it was a ship’s whistle when I first heard it. And, yet on subsequent listens it’s just four guys singing slightly off notes–note screaming at all, I can’t even really imagine how they do it– and it sounds great! I don’t know how they could duplicate that sound–which is so beautiful and unnerving at the same time–live, frankly.

And each song has little idiosyncrasies like that that really make this record fun to listen to. I think the reason I didn’t hear The Jam as an influence right away is because to me The Jam are smoooooth. Even when they’re rough around the edges in the earlier records, they never come across as choppy or angular or whatever the word is for the off-beat guitars that Gang of Four perfected. But really, the overall feel of News and Tributes is very much The Jam. I suppose some would say this sounds like a rip off, but I don’t mean that. I would never hear The Futureheads and think they were the Jam, or even that they were trying to be The Jam, they just use them as an excellent jumping off point.

Despite the fact that their influences are late ’70s, they sound totally of the 21st century. It’s a great amalgam of influences, creating compact, concise and well executed punky songs. Punky songs that are damned catchy too. I’m only sorry I waited a year to pick it up!

[READ: January 18, 2008] I.

This book has been for sale from McSweeney’s forever. I think it may have been one of their first publications. I’d always thought about getting it, but never did. Then, when they had their big sale I bought the I. and End of I. bundle. I can’t say I knew too much about it, but I trusted McSweeneys, and took the risk.

Well, I. confused me right from the start. It is called I., A Novel, and yet the book is clearly set up as a series of episodes, or short stories, if you will. (Each “chapter” has a title, but none have numbers or headings like “chapter 1.”  It was not even apparent to me that the first two stories were about the same person. The first one is about a guy (I.) coming to terms with his wife’s physical handicap, while the second story is more or less from a daughter’s point of view about an abusive and angry father (who is never revealed to be I., but which later episodes make clear it was I.)

After completing the book, the parts do fit together, and yet the episodes don’t entirely cohere into a narrative, per se. They are just episodes of this man’s life.

And then there’s the fact that his name is I. The stories are not written in the first person; he is not “I” he is “I.” In fact, in one of the stories he toys with the idea of using first person but chastises himself and then goes back to writing in third person. Yes, I. is a writer; but more on that later.

So the novel is about I., a man who only goes by an initial. In fact, names are not used very much in the book at all. In a nutshell, I. is a writer. He is married to a woman with a crippling, degenerative disease (I don’t recall if it is explained what she has, but she is in a wheelchair most of the time) and they have two daughters. It is clear from many of the episodes that I. has a very bad temper. It becomes apparent from some of the episodes that he rather resents his wife’s disability, and the inconvenience it causes him, and that his anger stems somewhat from this. In short, I. comes across as not a very nice man. Some might even say he comes off as a bit of a prick.

However, the way the story is told affects your perception of him. All of the episodes are written by I. He is ruminating on his life in third person. And he is perpetually backtracking and “correcting” his mistakes within the narrative. It becomes quite clear that I. is very aware of his flaws, and chastises himself quite a lot for his behavior. He chastises himself for past, and even future, behaviors that he fears he will screw up. In one story, he is so proud of himself that he didn’t raise his voice in anger for a whole car trip from Maryland to New York City, that when he finally loses his temper, we feel devastated for him as well as for his family.

Because we have such a closeness to him, I mean we’re right there in his head, he becomes a sympathetic character, not for his actions, but because of how much he thinks and rethinks what he does, and how much he chastises himself for when his impulses take over. We practically live his neuroses. This leads to a question of how responsible are we for our actions, if we are impulsive by nature. I suppose any reasonable person would say that we should be able to control ourselves, but impulses are just that, impulsive.

The style of writing is really the most fascinating part of the story. My friend Eugenie said she was assigned to read a number of pieces by him in a writing class, and I can see why. He writes as if everything he is writing is coming straight from his thoughts…from his head to the paper. So, he corrects word choices, he talks about coming over to the typewriter and sitting down to write and whether he should be doing something else. All as if it is happening right now, which is clearly impossible. He can’t be typing that he is getting up from the typewriter because he should be doing something else IF he is getting up to do something else. Yet each story carries this sense of immediacy.

This self-correcting style is most evident and really something of the point of the final “story” in the book, called “Again,” in which he revisits or reimagines the initial meeting with is wife. It’s about 100 pages, clearly the longest in the book. And I put off reading this last one in part because I was getting a little burnt out on the negativity but also because I wasn’t sure I could handle 100 more pages of the story just then (and of course, I had just gotten the Tom Perrotta book out from the library). Turns out it was the most interesting and gripping story of the bunch. I. continually rewrites his encounter with his future wife, changing details in his mind. The story is one long paragraph. It verges on stream of consciousness, and it takes an alert reader to realize that a new version has begun. But all these rewrites mean he’s hoping for… what, the best scenario? the worst scenario? the excuse he can make for how life turned out the way it did? there’s no answer. And it’s not entirely clear which version is the “truth.” But it is a fascinating look at his life and his neruoses.

All in all, it was still a weird book. The style really overrode the narrative, yet the character was fully fleshed out. The details of his life will remain with me for quite some time.  And, I’m now looking forward to reading End of I. the sequel.

I just looked up Stephen Dixon and found out that he is actually an older gentleman than I thought.  In fact, the portrait on the covers of the appears to be him! (Speaking of the covers…you can’t tell from the photo, but the cover of the book is actually a cutout of the letter I.  He is also a well regarded writer and a professor at Johns Hopkins.  Huh.

In fact, I’m just going to quote this bit from Wikipedia:

He is among the most prolific authors of short stories in the history of American letters, with over 500 published. His work is characterized by mordant humor, obsessive refigurings of simple stories, long sentences, and a frank attention to human sexuality.

I suppose if I had read that first I wouldn’t have been so confused by the book.  Nevertheless, it was more fun to go in without knowing anything.