I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BBC Sessions (various).

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.