I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: LOW-“Try to Sleep” (2011)

This was NPR’s song of the day for March 2.  I don’t really know Low all that well.  I know they play very slow music (which I’m typically not a fan of –slow music, not Low specifically).

I think I have been kind of frightened off of Low as being so soporific that it would make me sad.  But this song is a delight.  It’s not particularly slow and there’s a very cheery bell motif that pecks out the gorgeous melody.

The vocals are very nice harmony between the male voice (which reminds me a bit of lower register Damon Albarn–in fact the song gives of kind of an Albarn vibe) and the high-register female vocals.   It’s a really beautiful song.

In fact, this song has really changed my opinion of Low, and I may have to check out more by them.

[READ: March 2, 2011] “Backbone”

This is an excerpt from DFW’s forthcoming posthumous novel The Pale King.  Wallaceheads have already heard and/or read a variant on this piece which DFW read aloud at the Lannan Foundation.

I was reluctant to read this piece for a couple of reasons:  The Pale King is coming out in a little over a month.  I have read/listened to this particular piece not terribly long ago.  And, I didn’t love it all that much.

Well, it turns out that much like any draft or work in progress, with a bit of tweaking and editing, the passage can be made very strong and quite enjoyable.  This finalized version also intercuts a lot more information about other characters than was in the original version, making it a far more compelling piece of fiction in toto.

So the underlying aspect of the story remains the same: a six-year-old boy decides that he wants to be able to touch his lips to every part of his body.  He starts with the easy to reach places and, as he strains harder, he feels something pop.  This leads to a wonderful descriptive scene with the chiropractor who teaches him about stretching (she doesn’t know what he’s up to).  He takes the instructions to heart and spends inordinate amounts of time in his room stretching and doing all manner of other things to help him become more flexible (and, realistically, rather grotesque in appearance).

This excerpt gives more information about the boy’s father.  In the first draft, we learned that he was nervous, but now we learn about his private life, too.  And the title “Backbone” (I wonder who came up with that) takes on a new meaning when applied to the father.

As the excerpt ends, we get to think about the reality that you simply cannot have full access to your own body (you can’t see the back of your head or kiss your own lips).

There is no kind of resolution here, and given what I know about The Pale King (that it is about I.R.S. workers and boredom) I can’t imagine how it’s all going to tie together.  Nevertheless, it was a far more enjoyable piece, and I’m really looking forward to how it all fits together.

UPDATE: Because there’s always someone out there willing to do the work that I contemplate doing, lazenby has a Google doc that compares the Lannan version to the New Yorker version of this story.  Thank you.