I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: R.E.M.- Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables of the  (1985).

I’m willing to go on record saying that I like the title of this disc to be elliptical, even if the band has a definitive answer for what it should be called.

So, I’ve learned that I’m a bit of a fair-weather R.E.M. fan.  I’ve always felt that they were the bedrock of any alt music collection.  But recently (with the re-release of this album, which I did not buy) I decided to go back and listen to the full albums (I listen to Eponymous a lot, but I wanted to hear some deeper cuts, as they say).

This album has a lot of quintessential R.E.M.-sounding songs, and yet it’s also not a very poppy album, so it doesn’t feature too much of that jangly guitar–the other trademarked R.E.M. sound.  Rather, we get a lot of picked guitar bits, some great bass (a very underappreciated aspect of the band) and a lot of one of my favorite things: Peter Buck’s backing vocals.

There are a  few “hits” on this disc, songs that I love very much, but this disc also features a bunch of songs that don’t really excite me.  In fact, the back end of the disc is kind of ho hum. “Green Grow the Rushes” is a nice enough song.  “Kohoutek” just never really grabs me.  “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” is a pretty interesting experiment: the minor chord vocals section in the middle are rather creepy (and the guitar sounds a bit like an early-80s Cure song).  It’s my favorite track in the back of the disc.  The last two songs are gentle folk songs that are, again, nice, but not mind blowing.

Of course the front half of the disc is full of weird gems. “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” is a bizarre, off kilter delight.  And that weird string section at the end is only part of the oddity of it. “Maps and Legends” is a fascinating song that just seems chock full of noises (like an acoustic Public Enemy track) that keeps you guessing what will happen next.

“Driver 8” begins my favorite section of the disc.  “8” is one of the major highlights of this disc.  It’s dark and mysterious without being swamped under by murk.  And while I have no idea what it’s about it never stops me from singing along.  “Life and How t o Live It” features some great bass work (and an interesting guitar riff).  “Old Man Kensey” starts out really promising with a cool bass and peculiar guitar line, but it kind of drifts a little after that.  But the final track of this section, “Can’t Get There From Here” is an ebullient song, that feels really out of place here.  It’s one of my all time favorite R.E.M. tracks, and it adds some much needed adrenaline here.

I admit that I am more of a fan of R.E.M.’s louder songs (Document is a highlight).  So this disc is a little too tame for me.  I’m lead to believe that the new edition of the disc features some live tracks that really bring these songs to life, but I think I may just stick with Eponymous.

[READ: September 19, 2010] “Mr. Difficult”

I am planning on reading The Corrections soon (and one of these days Freedom, too).  Somehow I missed all of the controversy surrounding Franzen (I am blissfully ignorant of Oprah) when it was all over the place, but I recently learned that he and David Foster Wallace were friends and respected each other, so I thought I’d give him a read.  But before I get to the big book I decided to read some of his nonfiction (I had read about this Franzen article in which he talks about William Gaddis and wanted to read this right away).

So this article is a lengthy discussion about William Gaddis.  It is inspired by a letter writer (whom he calls “Mrs. M—-“) who accused Franzen of being an elitist–for using big words like “diurnality” and “antipodes”–and for not writing for the “average person who just enjoys a good read.”  So Franzen talks about two types of writers.  First is the Status Writer (like Flaubert) where the best novels “are great works of art…and if the average reader rejects the work it’s because the average reader is a philistine.”  And then there is the Contract Writer where a novel represents a compact between the reader and the writer “with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience.”

Franzen never says what camp he himself falls into, but rather, he explains that when he was in school, he wanted to be a Status Writer, he wanted to love difficult books.  However, when his screenplay was described as, basically, a knock off, he was despondent.  So, he decided to sit down and read Gaddis’ The Recognitions, a 900 page Difficult Book.

And he loved it.  He was engrossed and couldn’t stop.  The Recognition was Gaddis’ first novel.  It was received poorly and sold worse and Franzen believes it made Gaddis bitter, which made his later novels even more difficult (and even more about the importance of capital A Art).

As a consequence Franzen didn’t enjoy Gaddis’ later (even more difficult?) books like JR and A Frolic of One’s Own.  Or perhaps it was because Franzen’s circumstances had changed.  He read The Recognitions while he was unemployed and had a lot of time to sit around and read.  Later, he had less time, and easily forgot what JR was on about.

And so, much of the rest of the article turns toward Franzen’s bemoaning the state of these Difficult Books.  And, stranger still, he believes that the books that Gaddis wrote are books that Gaddis himself would not enjoy have enjoyed reading.  (But it’s still a really enjoyable piece which I could not put down).

I have it in my head that I read The Recognitions.  How could I not remember reading a 900 page book?  Well, even Franzen’s summary shows that it is a challenging, convoluted book, and it sounds like another book that I remember reading around the same time (What’s Bred in the Bone), so I’m not sure if I did or not.

JR, on the other hand, which Franzen hated, I distinctly remember.  And while I agree that it was a weird, awkward, Difficult Book, there are many scenes that he talks about which I remembered vividly.  I accept that i didn’t get everything that was going on in JR, but I clearly remember the plot (and enjoyed the comments on society).

I was planning to read A Frolic of One’s Own one of these days.  Maybe it would only be poetic to read it after The Corrections.