SOUNDTRACK: BLACK SABBATH-Sabotage (1975).
Sabotage seems to be somewhat forgotten (maybe because of the creepy cover art 0f Ozzy in a kimono and fascinating platform shoes, Bill Ward in red tights with a codpiece (and visible underwear on the back cover), and Geezer and Tony’s mustaches).
But this album rocks pretty hard and heavy.
“Hole in the Sky” is a sort of spastic rocker with Ozzy screaming vocals over the top of the rocking track.
“Don’t Start (Too Late)” is the by now obligatory acoustic guitar piece. But this one is different, for it has some really wild and unpredictable aspects to it.
“Symptom of the Universe” is another classic Sabbath track, a blistering heavy fast riff with the wonderful Ozzy-screamed: “Yeaaaaaahs!” It then surprises you by going into an extended acoustic guitar workout for a minute and a half at the end.
“Megalomania” is a slow ponderous piece. Unlike the psychedelic tracks from the previous records, this one moves along with a solid back beat. It also has a great bridge (“Why doesn’t everybody leave me alone?”). They definitely had fun with the effects (echoing vocals, etc.) on this one. And, like their prog rock forebears, this song segues into another rhythm altogether when we get the wonderfully fast rock segment. And the humorous point where the music pauses and Ozzy shouts “Suck me!”
“Thrill of it All” is a pretty good rocker, which after a pretty simple opening morphs into a slow, surprisingly keyboard-fueled insanely catchy coda. “Supertzar” is a wonderfully creepy instrumental. It runs 3 minutes and is all minor-keys and creepy Exorcist-like choirs. When the song breaks and the bizzaro Iommi riff is joined by the choir, you can’t help but wonder why no horror film has used this as its intro music.
“Am I Going Insane (Radio)” is a very catchy keyboardy track. It clearly has crossover potential (although the lyrics are wonderfully bizarre). But it ends with totally creepy laughing and then wailing. “The Writ” ends the album. It’s another solid rocker and it ends with an acoustic coda with Ozzy’s plaintive vocals riding over the top.
Sabotage has some truly excellent moments. It’s just hard to fathom the amount of prog-rock tendencies they’ve been throwing onto their last few discs (we’ll say Rick Wakeman had something to do with it).
Black Sabbath made two more albums before Ozzy left. I haven’t listened to either one of them in probably fifteen years. And my recollection of them is that they’re both pretty lousy. Maybe one of these days I’ll see if they prove me wrong.
[READ: December 16, 2009] McSweeney’s #7
This was the first McSweeney’s edition that I didn’t buy new. My subscription ran out after Issue #6 and I never saw #7 in the stores. So, I recently had to resort to a used copy.
This issue came packaged with a cardboard cover, wrapped with a large elastic band.
Inside you get several small volumes each with its own story (this style hearkens back to McSweeney’s #4, but the presentation is quite different). 7 of the 9 booklets feature an artistic cover that relates to the story but is done by another artist (not sure if they were done FOR the story or not). I have scanned all of the covers. You can click on each one to see a larger picture.
The booklets range from 16 to 100 pages, but most are around 30 pages. They are almost all fiction, except for the excerpt from William T. Vollman’s 3,500 page Rising Up and Rising Down and the essays that accompany the Allan Seager short story.
KEVIN BROCKMEIER-“The Ceiling” [cover by Eric White]
The basic plot of this story is quite simple: a large black square appears in the sky one day. Slowly it sinks towards the earth, growing larger and larger. Despite the somewhat Stephen King-like nature of the premise, the story is really all about how people live their lives: specifically, how one man’s family acts during this crisis. I enjoyed the story quite a bit.
However, I was confused by the beginning. The opening scene is at the son’s birthday party. There’s a lot of detail given, but it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the rest of the story. It begins with the son telling a fictional tale about himself in a hot air balloon with the father noting, on a separate line: “This is a story.”
It seemed like this was all a set up for something special. And I’m just not sure how that ties together with the rest of the story. But I’m not too worried about it as I enjoyed the piece as a whole.
ANN CUMMINS-“Red Ant House” [cover by Tim Bower]
I really enjoyed Cummins’ story in McSweeney’s #6, so I was excited to read this one. The red ant house is a house down the block that is infested with red ants. A new family moves into the house and the daughter of that family immediately latches on to the narrator of the story, Leigh. Leigh is one of 6 kids whose mother is pregnant again.
The new girl, Theresa Mooney, lives with a man who is not her father and a woman who is her mother. The man seems to have families all over the place. None of this is good news for Theresa Mooney, especially when Leigh and her siblings decide to point it out to her. Despite her best intentions however, Leigh and Theresa become friendly, and their bonding is complete when they dare each other to do something risky.
This story didn’t blow me away as much as the previous one, but there was something oddly affecting about it.
A.M. HOMES-“Do Not Disturb” [cover by Melinda Beck]
This is a very prickly story. It can easily be summed up by the exchange: “You knew I was a bitch before you married me, say something original.” In the story, a man and his wife are quite obviously falling apart (as individuals and as a couple). Before the evening’s events, the couple had yet another huge fight. And he thinks, yet again, of leaving her. But that night, during dinner, she becomes gravely ill.
Since she is a doctor, she is reluctant to go to the ER, but after several hours of agony, she relents. She is diagnosed with cancer. But this diagnosis, rather than softening her, as everyone suspects, just makes her more prickly, more demanding, even less compassionate. But he can’t leave a cancer-riddled wife can he? Even if she pushes him out? This was a very dark story, but it was very powerful. And, as with all of A.M. Homes work that I’ve read, it was very good.
MICHAEL CHABON-“The Return of the Amazing Cavalieri” [front & back covers by Chris Ware]
I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay when I read it a few years ago. I was delighted to discover that this story (the cover art suggests it is an “Un-Told Tale of Kavalier and Clay”) was included here. Sadly for me, I don’t remember too many details of the novel (it was like ten years ago, right?). Happily for me, they are not relevant to this story.
This piece concerns Cavalieri himself. He is walking to school with his nephew and the fear and dread he had during grammar school is rushing back at him. Cavalieri’s nephew has promised his class that The Amazing Kavalier will perform some magic tricks (maybe even escape from a safe!) for Sharing Time. Cavalieri susses up the class 
and decides that they are at the perfect age to be simply skeptical. He grows more nervous as Sharing Time approaches.
He proceeds to perform his simple tricks, but when he suspects that the kids are not all that impressed, he attempts one grand feat. I enjoyed this story immensely and it makes me want to re-read Kavalier and Clay (or at the very least Maps & Legends, which is sitting on my bedside right now).
The cover art by Chris Ware is, of course, fantastic. The front cover is designed to look just like a comic book. And the back cover is even more fun (in a sick and twisted way) as an ad for how much your life will suck if you have a baby.
HEIDI JULAVITS-“Little Little Big Man” [cover by Elizabeth Kairys]
This is, frankly, a bizarre story. It involves a tiny man named Big who works for a rodeo. And beyond that the story is full of what I can’t decide is fantasy, magical realism or just hallucinations.
Big becomes involved with a large woman who carries him over her shoulder (his face getting caught in her skirt ruffles as it bumps against her behind). This part was very funny.
They become serious and settle down. He grows unhappy and winds up spending a lot of his time climbing into her uterus to read the graffiti that her six children have written in there.
[Pause for people to digest that sentence].
So I’m not sure what to make of details like that. There are questions of impotence, unfaithfulness and pseudo-bestiality. And while I understand what happened plot-wise, arriving there was a very bizarre path.
J.T. LEROY-“Harold’s End” [cover by Sharon Leong]
Of course, now we know that J.T. Leroy is a fraud or a pseudonym depending on your opinion of the author’s stunt. It makes it hard to read this for the first time without having the author’s reality impinging on the story. I’m not sure if I would have been quite as cynical about the story if I didn’t know what I know about Leroy. But I an inclined to think that I would have been at least suspicious of the details of the story anyhow.
The basic premise here is that a man approaches a group of kids on the street. They are suspicious of him (is he a cop, a social worker, a john?), but when they see he is handing out free needles, they relent. He singles out one boy and invites him back to his house, where they shoot heroin and hang out for an extended period of time. A single event (that I will get to in a moment) happens which causes friction between them and the boy is asked to leave.
I was immediately suspicious of the story because the kids seem completely unreal. I’m not even sure how old they are supposed to be. They hang out on the curb but it’s unclear if they are trying to score drugs, if they are trying to score dates or what. The only thing we know is that they all have pets (a rat, a pit bull and a boa constrictor) hanging out with them. And, the kids tell the man that all of their pets have pedigrees (in far more exacting detail than one might expect a kid to know). The title of the story comes because the boy who the man brings home did not have a pet. Along with the heroin, the man gives the boy a snail named Harold as a pet that he can take care of himself.
So, despite the fact that the man is in the role of chickenhawk for this young boy, nothing sexual ever happens between them, except for the event that causes the friction (which is wholly unexpected and really rather disgusting). But it’s not even entirely apparent afterward why the man is upset (because it didn’t work? was he just embarrassed?). The whole scene from start to finish seemed unbelievable. Finally, as the story ends, we see the boy is too squeamish to clean out the snail’s poop, yet moments later he willingly dives into a dumpster (not to mention the disgusting scene above). It just doesn’t add up.
The whole story rang false to me. Maybe it was meant to be over the top; maybe it was meant to be surreally funny. Maybe it was a hyperreal or fantasy look at kids on the street. But I don’t think so. It was just creepy.
COURTNEY ELDRIDGE-“The Former World Record Holder Settles Down” [cover by Katherine Streeter]
This is one of the longest stories that McSweeney’s has published. It’s 75 pages. And, what is so great about it is that it never feels like a long story. And what’s even better is that the story goes through many twists and turns to end up in a sad but interesting place.
I loved the fact that the story begins by talking about the narrators’ husband. And he is a bowling dork. He loves bowling, he bowls all the time, and he has even gotten the narrator–a hipster New York woman who only thought of bowling ironically–to enjoy bowling. As well as other sports, too. He gets her to watch and enjoy baseball (and she develops a mad crush on Don Zimmer (!)).
But back to bowling. Her husband, Joel, gets very mad at himself if he doesn’t bowl well. And his mood stays dark for quite some time.
But. He’s not the titular record holder. The world record of the title comes as a complete shock (and I won’t reveal it). But once we learn of the record, everything in the story changes (except they still love bowling).
As the story progresses, we learn more and more about the narrator and how much her father’s disappearance had affected her. And how much she hates to talk about her past. And how much she loves her husband for not pushing things about her past. Until he does. And then things comes to a head.
There’s so much going on in this story, and it all starts so simply as a bowling tale. It was a great, great story.
WILLIAM T. VOLLMAN-“The Old Man: A Case Study from Rising Up and Rising Down”
This is a 100-page excerpt from Vollman’s 3,500 page study of violence called Rising Up and Rising Down (which I will never read). This excerpt is a case study, written in 1995 and concerns Muslim terrorists in Thailand.
The excerpt reads like a real-life version of Apocalypse Now. Vollman is in Thailand trying to get an interview with The Old Man, the reputed head of PULO, the Pattani Unification Liberation Organization. Vollman interviews (with his faithful translator D.) citizens of Thailand and Malaysia as well as political figures and former members of PULO.
The main problem I have with the excerpt is that the context is left out. We never learn who D. is or how he met her. And, we have no context for WHY he wants to do this. He spends days and days negotiating with bureaucrats, thugs and taxi drivers only to ultimately end up right where he started from. Is it all in aid of this book? I’m not entirely sure. I’m sure that the full text covers this, so it’s not really a compliant. I just wish I had a little context for this daunting piece.
As for the piece itself although it is a look at only one instance of violence, it is still fascinating to hear people involved in this organization (the quotes are direct in broken English, lending credence to the authenticity). And it is fascinating to see the kind of security that this man, the head of a terrorist organization, has and yet doesn’t have (and the difficult in actually finding the man). And to hear how much is hidden in plain sight about members of the organization is rather surprising.
No answers are forthcoming about the why’s of terrorism (maybe they are answered in the big book). But Vollman is a dogged investigator and an excellent writer. And although I don’t want to say I enjoyed the excerpt, I’m glad I read it. (But I’m still not going to read the 3,500 page version).
ALLAN SEAGER-“This Town and Salamanca”
Seager is a once-revered writer whose work has largely gone out of print. This booklet contains this short story as well as some commentary from others. The three nonfiction essays attached add a lot of backstory, and certainly allow the reader to learn a lot more about his work and about Seager himself.
I didn’t think I would enjoy the story all that much. They way it opened, I feared it was going to be a travelogue. But as it progressed I found it really enjoyable and surprisingly deep. The premise is that in his youth, John was a world traveler. He built a boat and sailed to Cuba. He joined the army to learn how to fly, and then he left the army and then he rejoined the army once again. He learned to fence in Italy and France. And then he returned from Salamanca to settle down in “this town.”
The story is really about the other residents of the town and how they more or less hung their hopes and dreams on his journeys, since none of them would ever leave the town. They relish his stories when he returns and ask for as many details as they can get. And his details are juicy and quite delightful.
But when he settles down in his home town, everyone is a little disappointed that their wanderer has stopped wandering. It is a simple no-frills story, and was quite effective.
JOHN WARNER-“Allan Seager: An Introduction”
Warner provides a brief sketch of Seager’s life: his rise to fame as a short story writer (and the numerous places that have published his work: Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy) and his eventual loss of recognition. He also fills in details about his personal life (and health).
JOAN FRY-“Colorless in Limestone Caverns: a remembrance”
As a student, Fry set out to seduce Seager. She was ultimately successful. But their relationship proved to be a terrible hindrance to her creative writing (although she wound up being the impetus for one of Seager’s own stories). She spent much of their time together trying to get away. I actually found this true story to be slightly more compelling than Seager’s short story itself.
STEVEN CONNELLY-“Man is Born For Sorrow as the Sparks Fly Upwards: a remembrance”
Connelly was a student of Seager’s. His essay here describes how autobiographical “This Town and Salamanca” is. Seager also traveled the world and then settled down in his home town to write. It also describes him as a wonderful teacher, who knew as much about James Joyce as anyone. Seager was inspirational for Connelly as well as many other students.
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McSweeney’s #7 is another great collection of stories. It was absolutely worth tracking it down.
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