I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TED LEO & PHARMACISTS-“The Numbered Head” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

 I really like the guitar sound that Leo creates for this song—angular and reminiscent of late 80s alt rock.  It’s not that different from the original, but it really grabs you.  By the time the big chorus kicks in, there are big vocals and big guitars,  It’s a nice pairing with the noisy solo and more aggressive verses.

Once I realized it was a Robert Pollard cover it made complete sense—it sounds exactly like a Guided By Voices song. Pollard’s version is about thirty seconds longer and I think that makes the difference.  I’ve always been kind of eh about Pollard.  I think some of his songs are awesome and some are just okay—he needs a serious editor (which is a funny thing to say about someone who has so many songs that are about a minute long).  I’ve also never really gotten into Ted Leo, although everything I’ve heard by him I like.  And this is no exception.

I prefer the Ted Leo version, and maybe it’s time to see what else he and Pharmacists have done.

[READ: April 4, 2012] “Hand on the Shoulder”

Its funny how different writers handle pacing so differently.  It’s kind of amazing in general how writing can have such different pacing.  Typically, Ian McEwan’s pacing is slow.  Not dull, but slow.  His stories evolve, they don’t just happen.

And that’s why it takes a little while to read this story.  It’s not especially long, but the pacing is very detailed (as befits who the main character becomes).  It also turns out that this is an excerpt from a novel (New Yorker, you fooled me again—although I kind of assumed this was an excerpt because I don’t think of McEwan as being a short story writer).  Knowing it’s an excerpt means the pacing makes even more sense.  This is a story that will unfold—there’s no hurry.

Serena Frome was recruited by the British security service forty years ago in 1972.  She was attending Cambridge and had just started dating a boy named Jeremy Mott.  Jeremy was an amazingly selfless lover—lasting for hours but never seeming  to reach orgasm himself.  We twenty-first century types know what this probably means about Jeremy, but Serena (and presumably Jeremy) didn’t find out until after they had broken up and he was then dating a man.

But the important issue is that he introduced her his history tutor Tony Canning, a gallant fifty-year old man.  Because of Serena’s political interests (which were atypical for a twenty-something, but not so far afield as to be weird), Canning was very interested in her.  It turned out that Canning had connections and was actually looking to recruit future spies from the right-minded youth of Cambridge.

It was unusual for women to be recruited like this and it was clear that Cannning’s motives were not completely above-board.  And soon enough they began an affair.  She was cheating on Jeremy when it started and Tony was cheating on his wife—I guess spies are good at secrets.

The rest of the story is about their affair—which was always more scholarly than sexual, although sex was ever-present (but seriously, never as good as with Jeremy).  Reading the story I felt badly for Serena, that she gave up so much of her youth for an older, married man—although clearly he was instrumental in her future plans.  So, which is the greater sacrifice?  The affair is completely secretive and seems to be more about grooming her for her exams.  She enjoys the luxuries that he affords for her (the fancy car, the house in the woods where thy have their trysts), and she never really seems jealous that he is married (a common trope in stories, and in life, I suppose).

The end of their affair comes because of a very simple slip up.  In her version he told her to do something.  In his version, she was trying to move in on his family.  I had to wonder if, given that the timing was just before her exams and the start of her future career—his actions were designed to harden her, to maker her a better spy.  That is not expressly stated, but it seems like the spy thing to do.

As I said, this is the beginning of a novel, so the ending is going to be disappointing if presented as a short story.  It’s not completely unsatisfying on its own—I mean, we learn how a woman may have been approached to be a spy in the 70s, and we see the process from beginning to end.  Of course, we don’t really get any sense of her beyond being a student and, since the story is told from her POV as an older lady, we know there is much left unsaid.

I’ve enjoyed McEwan’s novels in the past and I would certainly read this one, too.