I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: NPR Live Concerts from All Songs Considered (Podcasts).

For a couple of months now I have been exploring the All Songs Considered Podcasts.  I recently stumbled upon a link to a whole slew of Live Recordings that are available for free.  All of them are available for listening and most of them are available for downloading.

Some of the recordings seem to be acoustic in-studio sessions that last about 15 minutes (called the Tiny Desk Concerts), but there are many which are full concerts recorded from the soundboard.  I happened upon this site because of a 2008 Radiohead show which runs just over 2 hours.  Some other full concerts (most of which are recorded at the 9:30 club in Washington D.C. include: Superchunk, Dinosaur Jr., New Pornographers, Public Image Ltd., Tom Waits, and a whole bunch of shows from SXSW.  The Tiny Desk shows include “Weird Al” Yankovic, Phoenix and my new discovery Sharon Van Etten.  And there’s even videos of many of the shows, too.

I’m pretty excited to have discovered this, as there are a surprising number of great shows available here (as I’m scrolling to the bottom of the list, I keep finding more and more bands that I like).  And all you need is to download iTunes to hear them (and if you’re a geek like me, you download Audacity and insert track numbers for ease of cataloging).

[READ: November 21, 2010] “My Bird Problem”

Of all of the Franzen non-fiction pieces that I’ve read, this one has been my least favorite.  And one of the reasons for that is that it made me feel kind of uncomfortable.   Not because of the main content of the article (bird watching) but because of some of the personal information that he (as per usual) included in the article.

The first uncomfortable part concerns his at-the-time-wife.  It feels the like he is including information that seems like he would have needed her permission to write (especially since we know who he is and therefore know who she is,  I can’t believe she would give it).

The second thing was just how misanthropic Franzen is.  When he goes out into the woods to look for birds, he finds that the mere awareness of other people sends him into a fury.  (“Oh no, were those human voices coming up behind us?”).  And while I’ve certainly felt like that, to see it in print and to see it so often is more than a little unsettling.

The rest of the article wasn’t so much uncomfortable as a little confusing, there seemed to be time shifts and mentions of some other women, but I’m not sure where they came chronologically or if that even mattered.  And, one in particular “The Californian,” appears and reappears throughout the article; I’m not sure if they broke up and got back together or if he was flashing back.

The birding part of the article, on the other hand, was pretty interesting.  I am a very minor bird watcher (I don’t keep track of the birds I’ve seen) so I was curious about his die-hardiness of it (although I have such a hard time picturing him doing it).  I also enjoyed the way he tied it in to the environment (and the Al Gore slideshow that he saw (which would eventually become An Inconvenient Truth)).

But something about the whole essay felt unedited.  It was really long (even for his long pieces) and it seemed like each part could have been shortened without any loss in tone.  (This is the first time I’ve felt this way about one of his essays).

The one interesting aspect of the essay, though, was his attitude about his mother (yes, he throws in a lengthy bit about his mother as well).  Throughout the previous essays Franzen didn’t have many nice things to say about his mom.  And this one is actually not that different.  However, when she finally succumbs to cancer (after years of fighting various illnesses), he admits feeling sadness for the loss.  It was a touching moment of humanity in an essay that revels in misanthropy.

I note also that this essay came just a couple of months after his previous one and that this is the last essay he wrote for the New Yorker for 3 years (the next one comes in 2008–during which time I’m sure he was writing his novel).  I don’t want to imply that he burnt out on essays or anything like that, but it feels like maybe he was off his game on this one.