I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MOGWAI & MAGOO-Do The Rock Boogaloo (2002).

This split CD features a song each by Magoo and Mogwai.  Both songs are Black Sabbath covers, with Magoo doing “Black Sabbath” and Mogwai doing “Sweet Leaf.”  This was released by Fierce Panda records and it’s clearly kind of a joke (the top of the disc says: two sonic scratches of the big bad rock arse”).

And yet despite the jokey nature of the project, the covers are actually quite faithful.  I’ve never heard of Magoo in any other context so I don’t know anything about them.  But their version of “Black Sabbath” is pretty right on.  The big difference is that it seems like Magoo have no bass in their band.  Everything from guitars to vocals is much more tinny than anything Black Sabbath put out.  In fact, when the really fast part at the end comes up, you can hear the bass, but it sounds like perhaps just more guitar notes.  The vocalist is also far less than scary.  And yet for all of that, the song isn’t really jokey, it just doesn’t sound scary like the original.

Mogwai’s cover of “Sweet Leaf” seems even more jokey.  It opens with a pretty heavy sounding riff and then stops after a few seconds so someone can say “give me the microphone.”  There’s also a lengthy conversation going on throughout the background of the song.  The vocals are quite fascinating.  They are utterly understated, bordering on spoken.  As such, there is a notable Scottish accent for the verses.

After the main body of the song, they never quite get to the heavy drum part at the end, in fact, the song kind of just fades out while the lengthy (drunken?) conversation (and burping) continues for over a minute.

No one is going to say this is an essential recording, although it’s good for a laugh, I suppose.

[READ: February 28, 2011] Consider David Foster Wallace [essays 10-12]

More than half way through the essays, we’re moving away from infinite Jest era and into the Brief Interviews era.  These articles look at sincerity, love and footnotes.

Because I don’t have a lot to say about the pieces (I’m not an academic anymore), I’m only going to mention things that I found puzzling/confusing.  But be assured that if I don’t mention the vast majority of the article it’s because I found it interesting/compelling/believable.  I don’t feel comfortable paraphrasing the articles’ argument, so I won’t really summarize.

ADAM KELLY-“David Foster Wallace And The New Sincerity In American Fiction”

This was a strong, simple article which argues that, indeed, DFW is a voice for sincerity.  Basically, he looks at a few other articles that make this argument and he explore whether or not this is true.

His primary non-DFW related resource for his argument is Jacques Derrida (who is always a fun read), but he also looks at DFW texts. Specifically, he looks at Madame Psychosis and the A.A. meetings is IJ, as well as Brief Interview #20 (the granola-cruncher).

This was a very well argued essay.

CHRISTOFOROS DIAKOULAKIS-“‘Quote unquote love…a type of scotopia’: David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men”

This essay also looks at Brief Interview #20, although this time it is investigating “love.”  Since everyone knows that love is outmoded and corny, can DFW really be using it to mean “love”?  Tying back to the argument on sincerity, the answer is yes.  In fact, the very use of “corny,” seems to fall right into DFW’s mantra that new writers ought not to be afraid to seem corny anymore.

I’m not entirely sure what the main point of the article is, though.  It seems like the article is more about the definition of love in fiction than about Wallace’s use of the word.  And I guess that’s fine.

IANNIS GOERLANDT-“‘That is Not Wholly True’: Notes on Annotation in David Foster Wallace’s Shorter Fiction (and Non-Fiction)”

I was really looking forward to this article because the titular footnote in particular is fascinating in its multi-leveled possibilities.  So I was slightly bummed that he was looking at more than that footnote (of course a paper about one footnote sounds like a PhD thesis more than anything else).

Goerlandt looks at the way DFW’s footnotes impact the text, whether they are intended to break the flow of the text or to keep the reader active by jumping back and forth (Despite the potential anger the reader may feel about this extra work).

I didn’t have any arguments of complaint with this article at all.