I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MOGWAI: GovernmentCommissions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003 (2005).

It’s unlikely that Mogwai will ever release a greatest hits (well, someone probably will, but the band themselves don’t seem likely to do so).  As such, this compilation of BBC Recordings will certainly work well as one.

As I’ve mentioned many times, the BBC recordings are universally superb.  The quality of the recordings is unmatched.  And, typically the band takes the sessions very seriously.  The major different between these sessions and the official studio release is that the band is playing these songs live.  They are mixed well and sound great but they are live, so you can catch occasional subtle differences.

Mogwai, despite their seemingly improvised sound (all those noises and such) can recreate everything they do perfectly, and their live shows are tight and deliberate (except for the occasional moments where they really let loose).

The ten songs here span their career and are not played in chronological order.  This allows all of these wonderful songs to play off the tensions of each other.  And it shows that their later songs, which are less intense than their earlier ones, are still quite awesome and in a live setting don’t really lack for intensity after all.

The highlight of this disc is the scorching eighteen minute version of “Like Herod.”  The original is intense and amazing, and this live version allows them to play with the original in small ways, including allowing the quietness to really stretch out before they blow the speakers off the wall with the noise section of the track.

Even though I’m a fan of Mogwai, I don’t hear a radical difference between these versions and the originals.  Or should I say, it’s obvious which song they are playing.  There are some obvious subtleties and differences as befitting a live album, but unlike some live discs you don’t immediately notice that this version is “live.”

And that works well for both fans of the band (because as you listen and you hear the subtleties) and for newcomers–(because you’re not listening to weird, poorly recorded versions or versions that are for fans only).  And so, you get ten great Mogwai tracks.  Just enough to make you want to get some more.

[READ: June 11, 2011] The Burned Children of America

I found this book when I was looking for other publications by Zadie Smith.  This book kept cropping up in searches, but I could never really narrow down exactly what it was.  As best as I can tell, it is a British version of a collection of American authors that was originally published in Italy (!).  Editors Marco Cassini and Martina Testa work for minimum fax, an Italian independent publisher.  In 2001, they somehow managed to collect stories from these young, fresh American authors into an Italian anthology (I can’t tell if the stories were translated into Italian or not).

Then, Hamish Hamilton (publisher of Five Dials) decided to release a British version of the book.  They got Zadie Smith to write the introduction (and apparently appended a story by Jonathan Safran Foer (which was not in the original, but which is in the Italian re-publication).  This led to the new rather unwieldy title.  It was not published in America, (all of the stories have appeared in some form–magazine or anthology–in America), but it’s cool to have them all in one place.

The title must come from the David Foster Wallace story contained within: “Incarnations of Burned Children,” which is one of his most horrific stories, but it sets a kind of tone for the work that’s included within (something which Zadie addresses in her introduction): why are these young successful American writers so sad?  So be prepared, this is not a feel good anthology (although the stories are very good).
Oh, and if you care about this kind of thing, the male to female ratio is actually quite good (for an anthology like this): 11 men and 8 women.

ZADIE SMITH-Introduction
Zadie Smith was a fan of David Foster Wallace (she wrote a  lengthy review of the ten-year anniversary of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men which is republished in her book Changing My Mind), so she is an ideal choice to introduce this book.  Especially when she provides a quote from DFW’s interview in 1995 about how living in America in the late 90s has a kind of “lostness” to it.  With this in mind, she sets out the concerns of this collection of great stories: fear of death and advertising.

Zadie gives some wonderful insight into each of these stories. The introduction was designed to be read after the book, and I’m glad I waited because while she doesn’t exactly spoil anything, she provides a wonderful perspective on each piece and also offers some ideas about the stories that I hadn’t considered.  And it’s funny, too.

GEORGE SAUNDERS-“I CAN SPEAK!™”
I have read this story several times and I wasn’t going to read it again, but at the end of the book I decided to see how it fit in with the rest of the stories.  And indeed, the tone of the story works well with the rest of the book (even if the contents themselves are pretty different).  This story is a letter from a salesman addressing a woman’s dissatisfaction with the I Can Speak mask. As the letter grows in length, the craziness of the product really unveils itself, as does the creepy nature of the letter writer (and, frankly, of the company).

MATTHEW KLAM-“There Should Be a Name for It”
This is an incredibly dark story that opens up with a somewhat lighthearted-seeming scene of a woman prepping a chicken for dinner. Soon we learn more about he couple’s past and how that chicken is something of a metaphor for their relationship.  It gets uncomfortable very quickly and has been quite unforgettable.

JUDY BUDNITZ-“Flush”
This story follows two sisters as they try to help their mother (and father) cope with aging.  The sisters take turns visiting their mother who has to go for medical appointments. But what is a sister to do if her mom refusing to go into the doctor’s office? The story is poignant and awkward.  It’s very good.  And the surprise twist at the end is really powerful.

MYLA GOLDBERG-“Comprehension Test”
This story is written like a quiz.  And the quiz covers many uncomfortable questions about racism in America.  The quiz out kind of amusing but gets heavy very quickly. The format also makes the reader think about thinks that she might not normally, especially within the structure of fiction.

JEFFREY EUGENIDIES-“Timeshare”
This is the story of a young man’s father.  His father was a success and then a failure and the failures seems to keep coming.  The failure of this story is of the titular timeshare: his father is trying to fix up an old hotel and make it ready for public purchase.  But it is slow going, and there is very little in the way of capital or common sense at work.  It is told from the point of view of the son, which is an interesting perspective on the failings of the father.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE-“Incarnations of Burned Children”
This is a very disturbing story which I have read several times. I chose not to read it again for this book, but the final image of the poor child will never go out of my head.

AMANDA DAVIS-“Faith or Tips for the Successful Young Lady”
This book was dedicated to Davis who was killed in a plane crash at 32.  This story is another dark one.  In it a young girl who was fat has returned from a rehabilitation clinic (not for being fat) and is now much thinner (as well as healthier).  But she is followed around school and everywhere by an invisible woman who is not only very fat but who eats everything in sight.  This woman informs everything that she does.  It is very intense and feels very personal.

DAVE EGGERS-“Letters from Steven, a Dog, to Captains of Industry”
This “story” first appeared in McSweeney’s #5 under the pseudonym Daniel O’Mara. These letters are from Steven, a dog who likes to run. As the introduction says, the real story is imagining what the CEOs thought of such peculiar letters.

JULIA SLAVIN-“Dentaphilia”
This is the most surreal story of the bunch.  In it, a woman begins growing teeth all over her body.  First in places that might appear like a mouth (crook of the elbow, armpit) but eventually just everywhere (spine, forehead).  Her partner is kind of turned on by the new growths, despite how debilitating it might be.  But when she starts spending more and more time with her dentist, jealousy arises.  The story ends with inevitable sadness.  What a strange concept.

A.M. HOMES-“A Real Doll”
In this story a young boy begins dating his younger sister’s Barbie.  Literally. It doesn’t even start out innocently since the first time he asks her out, he gives her a Diet Coke laced with valium.  (Barbie talks back to him, by the way). They have fun together (they mock Ken’s lack of parts), and eventually, she starts to enjoy his company.  When he tries to take it to the next level, well, ew.  But why is his sister suddenly being so mean to Barbie.  What’s going on?  It’s a weird story but the emotions are palpably genuine.

SHELLEY JACKSON-“Sleep”
This was the only story I really didn’t like in the book.  In it, sleep falls all over the town.  It seems like a kind of lazy metaphor for snow (it falls in drifts, all over houses etc).  By the end, the metaphor seems to change into something else, and I felt like it never really worked.

STACEY RICHTER-“The First Men”
This is the most menacing story of the bunch.  A school teacher who buys her drugs from one of her students has not paid up.  The story turns threatening when one of his thugs catches up to her in the mall.  But rather than just extracting violence, he begins talking to her about a book she assigned for school.  He seems genuinely upset about the grade she gave him.  But she can’t engage with him; can’t stop talking about the money, and things turn ugly pretty quickly.

AIMEE BENDER-“The Leading Man”
In this peculiar story, a boy is born with nine fingers that are shaped like keys.  He spends much of his life trying to find the locks for the keys.  It’s a fascinating idea and wonderfully followed though.

KEN KALFUS-“Invisible Malls”
This was another story I didn’t really enjoy all that much.  There are several brief descriptions of different idealized malls as told to Kublai Khan. The concepts behind them are quite amusing, but seemed like worked better as one liners than as whole paragraphs.  It was kind of funny, but not terribly funny.

ARTHUR BRADFORD-“The Snow Frog”
In this dark story, set in an undisclosed time and place, a young girl is able to give birth to things that she has swallowed–what?  Well, a chick hatches from an egg that she swallowed whole.  When she finds a writhing mass of dying worms that are glowing green, she only wants to help.  This was a pretty surprising story and one that actually feels hopeful.

JONATHAN LETHEM-“Access Fantasy”
In this story, a futuristic New York is comprised of lower class folks who appear to live in cars in a permanent traffic jam.  They have fantasies of apartment life, and they actually wind up buying a kind of apartment porn–videos that lovingly showcase available apartments. But the poor have ways of escaping from the clutches of their inevitable traffic jam: they can become walking advertisements–something is placed in their head so that all of their conversations are about the product they are shilling.  When the main character tries to resolve these two issues–escaping the traffic jam but becoming and advertisement so, the power of the overtakes all of his meaningful conversation.  I enjoyed the premise of the story, bu I feel that the story itself was much too long.  It didn’t give enough details about the weirdness of the world, so i spent most of the story wondering what was going on, rather than following the plot.

SAM LIPSYTE-“The Wrong Arm”
Every time I think that Lipsyte hasn’t done short stories, I find one more that I didn’t know about (in fairness, I also didn’t know he had a book of short stories published…duh, so I’ll have to check that out).  Anyhow, this story was a weird one.  A mother has a disability in her arm–which we glimpse, but never really learn about. We just know that it is disfigured and no one should ever touch it. What happens when the son reaches for his mother’s hand?

RICK MOODY-“Circulation”
This piece is set up in three sections: Of Office Supplies, Of Blood Cells, Of Ideas.  The protagonist of the first part is a paper clip.  But the amazing thing is the way he ties all of the elements of the story together, how these seemingly disparate lives (even the paper clip) impact the others.  The final note from the narrator is a stroke of greatness.

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER-“A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease”
This is a story largely made of punctuation.  Squares and boxes and smiley faces and arrows which he uses in conversations to indicate pauses.  It’s a weird but effective way to show the way families converse (or fail to).