SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Hoist (1994).
I always think of Hoist as a kind of goofy album because of the way they are dressed on it (and the crazy cover). But it is absolutely not. Indeed, opener “Julius” sounds like a ZZ Top song. In fact, every time they’ve played it live I assumed it was a cover. It is less restrained in the live setting, because this version has more acoustic guitar. There’s even backing vocalists and horns. “Down with Disease” has that great watery bass, but the song (which sounds good) here is a little stiffer than the live version. It also has something of an R&B feel (with backing vocals) even if the guitar is certainly not R&B at all. It bleeds right into “If I Could” a pretty harmony-voiced mellow song. The big surprise comes from the Alison Krauss vocals–she gets a solitary line or two and then harmonies. The song is very pretty but the strings are overkill.
“Riker’s Mailbox” is indeed a reference to the Star Trek character, although the 30 second burst of noise is pretty hard to explain. Nevertheless, the trombone is played Mr Riker himself, Jonathan Frakes. It jumps into the rocking “Axilla, Pt. 2” which is usually a little faster live (I like the sloppier crazier live version better). There’s some vulgar dialogue in the middle of the song.
“Lifeboy” is a mellow acoustic song that builds from just guitar. Lyrically it’s interesting: “God never listens to what I say…and you don’t get a refund if you overpray.” It folds into “Sample in a Jar,” which is just as good here as any live set. “Wolfman’s Brother” ahs horns thrown on top and some interesting sound effects. Although overall l don’t like this version nearly as much—I don’t care for the horns or the backing vocals plus in the live version they emphasize the bruh of brother more which is cooler. (Although I do enjoy the weird “Shirley Temple” line at the end). “Scent of Mule” opens so strangely with crazy guitars and a thundering drum. The singing is very silly (with silly voices) and has a very twangy style (complete with banjo and yeehah).
“Dog Faced Boy” is a sweet (but weird) acoustic guitar number. “Demand” is a ten minute song which I don’t really know at all. It has a strange, staccato style riff. At 2 minutes in, a car starts and after a commercial on the radio the driver pops in “Split Open and Melt” (a nod to “Detroit Rock City,” perhaps?). This goes on until 9:30 at which time there’s a car crash and choir of angels (sick!).
I don’t car for the horns and R&B flavoring of this album, but the song selection is really quite good.
[READ: September 24, 2013] Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge
I read about this book in Tom Bissell’s reviews recently. He really made it sound like an interesting book. So when I saw that we had just received a copy, I grabbed it and brought it home for the weekend.
There are 52 short stories in the short book (which is less than 200 pages). Some of the stories are very short (1 page) with a few coming in at 5 or 6. The 1 page stories are like flash fiction but they seem to be more of snapshots than actual full stories and they seem like they might be diary entries or something. The fact that a number of them are italicized with dates at the end make them seem like a selection from the same person rather than individual stories.
The stories are set all over the world, although they tend to focus on Chicago and Boston. They are pretty universally dark with themes of death and loss permeating the collection. And yet despite their overall negative feeling, the stories aren’t really depressing, exactly. Bissell described the narrators as like someone telling a story about someone telling a story. And that is true and that distance seems to take some of the edge off the stories.
But what’s impressive is the consistently strong and powerful writing. The way that Orner is able to convey so much with such few words. Some stories are just a scene, others are a whole lifetime. But either way they are all really gripping.
I wasn’t going to write about each story, but it would have nagged at me if I didn’t, so here’s a few words about 52 stories.
Part I: Survivors
Foley’s Pond
This is about the funeral of a little girl, but really it’s about the girl’s brother and how he felt responsible for what happened to her. Which is a punch in the stomach. But her death happened in 1979, so the remove is great and takes some of the pain away. But really it’s about how he feels angry that his sister’s death meant the end of their secret hangout.
Occidental Hotel
A short story about a man who has an affair with the maid. As the story ends we see things from her point of view which changes the nature of the story.
Spokane
This is a very elaborate story and I loved the way it was told. A woman is talking to Barry (her husband, perhaps), about what happened a long time ago in Spokane. The story is very significant to her but he keeps interrupting and downplaying the significance which just angers her more. And her anger at her own story and her man’s reaction are palpable. This was one of my favorites in the collection.
The poet
Just a paragraph about an old poet, it’s more of a thinker than a story.
Herb and Rosalie Swanson at the Cocoanut Grove
This story is about how Herb Swanson began to tell a story two decades after the incident happened. Herb and Rosalie were in a hotel that burned down. As it turned out they had left before the fire started. But the way he told it, they were in the heat of the moment. And each time it became more and more dramatic. Then soon Rosalie stared chiming in withe her own details. But her details began to overshadow Herb’s which made him tell the story less and less frequently. But then Rosalie wouldn’t ever begin the story herself. I loved the dynamic of this story–both the people, the way the story in the story was told and how everyone reacted to it in an almost unspoken way.
“My old boss E.J. once told me he was famous for goofy hats”
This is the first one that is all in italics with the date Minneapolis, 1977 It concerns E.J. and his many hats (E.J. appears later in the book which certainly suggests some linkage in these stories).
At the kitchen table
The crisis of having your child die before you (and the indignity of how she must claim the body).
Grand Pacific Hotel, Chicago, 1875
What was the hotel that Mrs Lincoln stayed in like on that fateful night?
Railroad Men’s Home
Henry’s enemy in the nursing home lived next door. Interestingly the next door neighbor didn’t hate him back, he had his own enemy down the hall. There are dramas in everyone’s life it seems.
Plaza Revolución, Mexico City, 6 a.m.
A woman has a moment of introspection as she sells television antenna in Mexico City.
Horace and Josephine
This longer story was about the narrator’s aunt Josephine and Uncle Horace. They were always wealthy and lived extravagantly. The story details the fortunes of the narrator’s family and how so many of them lost their fortunes at the same time through a bad investment. And yet despite their failures Josephine and Horace always maintained an air of wealth. The end of the story shows them each old, dying and stuck in separate nursing homes. The story ends sadly but sweetly.
“I was six, maybe seven months old”
In this italicized entry the narrator says that his babysitter wrapped him in a blanket and put in the oven to keep warm on freezing cold Chicago nights. His parents were horrified but he was snug and cozy and disturbed when they took him our.
Pampkin’s lament
I had read this story in McSweeney’s 21. I liked even more the second time. I find that these stories work so much better with the other stories giving them context.
Lincoln
This is about Lincoln, Nebraska and how desolate it can be.
Last car over the Sagamore Bridge
I loved the set up of this story. It’s 1947, a year no one will much remember. It’s after the war but before anybody really got used to the war being over. And the main character reflects back upon the hurricane that wiped out the city of Dennis. And how his was the last car to drive over the Sagamore Bridge before the hurricane hit and the closed it off.
Part II: The Normal
Nathan Leopold writes to Mr. Felix Kleczka of 5383 S. Blackstone
A serial killer addressed the people who wrote to him. And he is not repentant.
“At the end of our street was a commune in a log mansion”
This entry is about a commune at the end of his street with naked women running around (although he was too young to appreciate it). It was shut down before he was old enough to enjoy it but that didn’t stop him from investigating the house.
Detamble
Despite the house being torn down, the resonances of the murders that happened there still ring. It was only the dog who helped people find the victims.
Dyke Bridge
Two boys play under the bridge that Ted Kennedy drove his car off of. And that event looms large as they play in 1976.
The mayor’s dream
Despite his power, Mayor Daley’s dreams often left him feeling powerless.
Fourteen-year-olds, Indiana Dunes, late afternoon
A girl sits amidst the boys as they play. She slowly realizes that she doesn’t love any particular one of them, she loves them as a mass–the way the talk to each other and roughhouse, the love that they have for each other is what she wants.
Denny Coughlin: in memory
I read this in Grantland and I enjoyed it even more this time (again, context helped).
The divorce
The divorce is a quiet one, with Gary still living in the house as he looks for a place to live. But the divorce is not finalized before Gary unexpectedly dies. And while Francine isn’t necessarily sad that he’s dead it changes everything, especially since his stuff is still in the house.
1979
When Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter.
The Vac-Haul
This was a strange story that I enjoyed quite a bit. It’s about Larry Phoebus, the man who drove the city’s vac-haul. It was designed to clean the sewers when they backed up. It cost the city $200,000. But the city’s sewers worked fine so Larry Phoebus would just sit in the truck in the park all day long. And on this one time, the narrator was with him when there was a shoot-out in the town. But he and Larry just at in the Vac listening to it on the radio. A perfect example of Orner’s twice removed narrator.
PART III: In Moscow Everything Will Be Different
“The time I said it was only an emotional affair”
This entry talks about an emotional affair and how “you” reacted to it (by taking off your clothes in front of a passing train while the commuters stared).
At the Fairmont
Bernice waits for her husband after the war at the Fairmont Hotel. But she thinks more about the man she met there the night before.
Roman morning
Another brief look at fathers and sons.
Eisendrath
Eisendrath finds himself on stage performing a play–even though he hasn’t acted since eighth grade. He doesn’t know any lines. He tries to simply go with the moment, but he can’t.
Woman in a Dubrovnik Café
The opinions of an opinionated woman in a cafe
Reverend Hrncirik receives an airmail package
This story concerns God, Alan Paton and regret.
“Call these the meditations of an overweight junior lifeguard”
What can a lifeguard do when no one is swimming?
Waukegan story
A woman and her son Damyan (who she renamed Danny for the trip to America) emigrate to America, leaving the woman’s husband behind. My favorite moment in the story is when the woman, who gets a job as a cleaning lady is told that the women of the houses clean before they get there. She tries to make a new life and even finds a new man, but everything she does feels like a betrayal.
Lubyanka Prison, Moscow, 1940
An injustice in a prison.
February 26, 1995
I enjoyed this story a lot. It takes place in a Chinese restaurant where a man is killed in the bathroom. One of the patrons becomes fascinated with the place and begins to eat there quite often. They assume he is a reporter. And then things get ugly. I loved how compact and tension-filled this story was.
Late dusk, Joslin, Illinois
Musings on a husband who ignores the weather forecast.
Part IV: Country of Us
Waldheim
A man is buried in a cemetery, but his wife is later cremated. The man wonders when she will arrive. Short but poignant.
Renters
An old married couple doesn’t want to commit to owning a home.
On the 14
Sitting on the bus across from dead Uncle Horace who has a lot to say about money. Irv Pincus is mentioned in this story.
Longfellow
I enjoyed this weird story about a small rubber hippo named Longfellow. The narrator’s brother used to terrorize the narrator with Longfellow, speaking in a high-pitched voice and heaping tons of abuse on him. This was all part of a town named Pubic, Illinois. The only good thing about he town was Big Bill Thompson-Fox, (also voiced by the brother) who was kind of nice to the narrator. Decades later, the narrator enacts his revenge on Pubic.
Paddy Bauler in a quiet moment
Another introspective politician.
Geraldo, 1986
A 17 year old’s take on Geraldo Rivera “discovering” Al Capone’s vault.
Harold Washington walks at midnight
After his death, Harold Washington comes back and walks among the people.
From the collected stories of Edmund Jerry (E.J.) Hahn, Vol. IV
The time that E.J. and friends bought a fridge for their recently married and very poor friends. It probably still hasn’t been paid for,
The gate
A quiet moment after visiting hours.
“A couple of years before I was born”
What it was like to run away from a husband to Massachusetts, before it was easy to be tracked down.
“My mother stands by the window”
In this story his mother is listening to Frank Zappa. For that alone I like this story. I also liked the introspection at the end.
“It may have been in The Wapshot Chronicle”
Of guest rooms and Middlemarch.
The moors of Chicago
How calling the hills “moors” can change everything
Belief, 1999
Injunctions to not be so serious.
Irv Pincus used to steal lamps from Kaplan’s Furniture
And Kaplan not only knew but admired watching Pincus hawk the stuff right in the very alley that abutted the building.
Shhhhhh, Arthur’s studying
Arthur was always studying and seemed so pious, so it was quite the scandal when he wrote his first book and it was a scandalous defense of Cataline, a villainous fiend, murderer, traitor and temple robber.
~~~~~
So these stories are quite varied with lots of different characters, but they all have a kind of black and white feeling of the past. It’s a very good collection.
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