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Archive for the ‘Jonathan Franzen’ Category

Jonathan Franzen–”Anti Climax” (New Yorker, April 21, 1997)

Posted in Airlines, Books about writers, Canadian Music, Consumerism, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Jane Siberry, Jonathan Franzen, Masturbation, New Yorker, Nick Hornby, Rheostatics, Sex, The Violet Archers on October 13, 2010| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE VIOLET ARCHERS-Sunshine at Night (2008).

This is the second Violet Archers CD.  It’s a fantastic collection of mellow songs.   “You and I” is a delightful acoustic guitar and vocals song (and Vesely’s voice sounds great: soft and delicate without being whiny).  “Insecure” features the vocals of Ida Nilsen (a great voice which works wonderfully with Vesely’s songs).  It also has a wonderful trumpet solo (!) (which consists of only a few notes repeated but which is totally great).  It sounds a bit too similar to Siberry’s “The Speckless Sky” but it wins out with its own identity by the end.

“Transporter” is an electric track (still mellow though).  Vesely’s delivery is great on this, with unexpected delays making it just off the beat.  Although “Tired” (we can tell by the titles that Vesely is not a “Party On” kind of guy) rocks much harder than you’d expect for the title, it’s still nothing like a hard rock song.  “Sunshine at Night” continues in this louder vein, but again, Vesely’s voice is soft, so even a louder song doesn’t rock hard.  This has some great harmony vocals.

“Suffocates” returns to the upbeat acoustic style while “Truth” is its cool minor chord downbeat companion.  “Themesong” is a cute, more upbeat track that finally mentions a violet archer.  “Don’t Talk” is the only song that builds from a standstill (as opposed to just starting) and the drums and power chords make it feel like it’s a bid for commercial viability.  And the disc ends with “Listening,” a quiet lullaby of a song that showcases’s Vesely’s falsetto.

The Violet Archers still tour and there are some downloadable shows available on the Rheostatics live website.  And, of course, Tim was super nice, so let’s hope for a left field smash hit on their next disc.

[READ: September 29, 2010] “Anti-Climax”

This piece is from The Critic at Large section of the New Yorker and it seems to be a kind of Books redux section.

I enjoyed this piece more than I had a right to enjoy a thirteen year old article about sex books.  Strangely enough it begins with a comment about televisions in airports (which I agree with JF that they are the devil and are unavoidable and make it really hard to read).  And I cannot even imagine that 89% of air travelers believe that the TVs make “time spent in an airport more worthwhile” (although you know that is one of the more nebulous survey questions)

But this topic segues into the matter at hand: sex books.  He notes how he is also at odds with the norm when Men’s Health says that lingerie is the US male’s favorite erotic aid.  And I can’t believe how in tune I am with JF Franzen’s comment:

What I feel when I hear that the mainstream actually buys this stuff is the same garden-variety alienation I feel on learning that Hootie & the Blowfish sold 13 million copies of their first record, or that the American male’s dream date is Cindy Crawford. (more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–“Sifting the Ashes” (New Yorker, May 13, 1996)

Posted in Cigarettes, Death, Essays, Jonathan Franzen, Mad Men, Neil Young, New Yorker, The Violet Archers on October 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: VIOLET ARCHERS-End of Part One (2005).

The Violet Archers are the new(ish) band for Tim Vesely from the Rheostatics.  I’ve conveniently waited until The Rheos completely broke up before really really getting into them.  And it took me some time before deciding that I needed to get The two Violet Arhcers discs.  And then I discovered they were pretty much unavailable.

But the nice folks who used to sell their discs got me in touch with Tim himself, and he very nicely sent me the two CDs (for a most reasonable price).

When a band breaks up it’s always interesting to see what the solo members do…if they try to go very different from the original band or if they stay the same.  Well, the Rheos were a pretty unusual band, and if these two discs are any indication, it seems like Tim may have been the pop song writer.

“End of Part One” starts with a guitar and cool organ opening before the song kicks into a mellow rocker.  “Coordinates” has more interesting keyboard sounds (these sound strange to me because the The Rheos weren’t very keyboardy).  Lyrically, it’s a great collection of rhymed verses that lead to a wonderful na na na chorus.

The middle songs are a nice mixture of slightly fast rockers and almost folky ballads.   Vesely has a great knack for sing along choruses, but he’s also been alt-enough to know when to throw in an unexpected twist, or an interesting sound (the guitar sound in “Saved Me” is great) and the simple melody of “Simple” makes for a beautiful campfire song.

“Time to Kill” is a delightful gentle rock song with a great chorus and instrumentation.  It sounds like an outtake from a fantastic 1960s compilation.  It’s followed by “All that’s Good” which sounds like an awesome long-lost Neil Young song.  The guitar is spot on and the vocals work wonderfully.

“Fools Gold Rope” is a nice ballad with vocals by Ida Nilsen.  And the last four tracks are all shorter pieces.  “Life and Then” features keyboards prominently, while the oddly titled “Track Display” has some nice guitar work.

This is overlooked pop gem. Nothing is overly commercial, and yet it’s all fun and an enjoyable listen.  I’m glad Vesely is still writing great tunes.

[READ: September 28, 2010] “Sifting the Ashes”

This Dept. of Disputation piece is about cigarettes.  I’ve never smoked and I’ve never been much of a fan of cancer sticks.  However, I find myself siding with Franzen on a few points ion this article.

Franzen has evidently quit smoking several times (it’s even unclear from the way this is written if he’s actually smoking now (1996) or not).  But he never blames Philip Morris or RJ Reynolds for his addiction.  He argues correctly that marketing to kids reserves you a place in hell, but that really, parents and pop culture probably got more kids to smoke than Joe Camel ever did.

He makes some funny observations about smoking (getting freaked out about getting lung cancer?  Why not light up to calm down).  But mostly he notes how all of the attempts in the past to curb smoking have resulted in more hegemony for the big players: The ban on TV advertising saved the industry millions of dollars and froze out new competitors.  Even tax increases on smokes in 1982 were a way for the industry to also raise prices (and make more money) all the while blaming the tax.  And what we wind up with is that no plaintiff can realistically claim ignorance of tobacco’s hazards, therefore the companies will never be deemed negligent for selling cigarettes.

(more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–“Lost in the Mail” (New Yorker, October 24, 1994)

Posted in Drinking, Drugs, Jonathan Franzen, New Yorker, Paul Debraski, Pavement, Post Office, The Flaming Lips, Weezer on October 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PAVEMENT-Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1993).

Now this album, Pavement’s second (after the Watery, Domestic EP, which I’ve never heard) is my idea of perfect Pavement.  Some might complain that this album is too commercial (although it hardly is) but to me is shows a consolidation of the talents into actual songs.

It opens with “Silence Kit” which sounds like a twisted take on a Buddy Holly song–disconcerting and familiar at the same time.  The second track “Elevate Me Later” ups the ante a bit with a noisy raucous chorus.

“Stop Breathin'” is a dark song, a sort of minor ballad that sounds even more disconsolate with the slightly out of tune guitar work.   But the lengthy instrumental at the end is (although simple) quite pretty.

And then there is the sublime nonsense of “Cut Your Hair.”  This was the first Pavement song I’d ever heard all those years ago.  And from the silly “oo oos” at the beginning to the crazy screaming guitar solo and crunchy “NO BIG HAIR” line I fell in love immediately. It was a wonderful left field hit (not unlike “She Don’t Use Jelly”) that brought a great band some attention.

It’s followed by “Newark Wilder,” a slow track that fits wonderfully after “Hair.”  One might even call it a ballad.  But it is definitely not standard fare, when the bass (or baritone guitar) plays a riff instead of a bridge.

The album picks up the rocking vibe again with, “Unfair” which I noticed is like a rough precursor to Weezer’s “Beverly Hills.”  It’s a fairly conventional song but it’s made unconventional by Malkmus’ delivery and guitar style (and would probably be a hit if it was released today).

I recently mentioned “Gold Soundz”.  (And it’s amazing how much the live version sounds just like the studio–as if everything was intentional).  It’s followed by the goofy Dave Brubeck parody/tribute “5-4=Unity.”  And of course, “Range Life” is just an awesome slacker anthem.  It’s got everything.

The last three songs offer a lot of diversity.  “Heaven is a Truck” is a piano based, drunken-sounding ballad.  “Hit the Plane Down” is a rambling wonderful shambles that devolves into a complete chaos, and “Fillmore Jive” is a 6 minute “epic.”  It opens slowly, and then builds into a fairly conventional sounding (drunken, sloppy, end of the concert) rock song.

I feel that Pavement peaked with this disc.  It’s really fantastic.

[READ: September 23, 2010] “Lost in the Mail”

As I am wont to do, I have gotten a little obsessed with an author. Recently it was Wells Tower (there’s still a few Harper’s pieces by him I haven’t read yet). And right now its Jonathan Franzen (even though I haven’t read any of his novels yet).  After reading the previous New Yorker piece, I wanted to see what else he had written for them.  Seeing his entire list at the New Yorker site is daunting and it makes it seem like he was constantly writing quite long pieces for them.  And yet, parsing it out, it comes out to about one article a year.  And yet some of these article, whoo boy, are 12 or 13 pages…quite lengthy for the New Yorker.

And so, I’m going to read these pieces over the next few weeks–I thought about reading each year’s piece during a different week, but that seems too regimented.  And since the majority of these pieces are non fiction (there are about 5 short stories in the mix) I’m going to be reading them with an eye towards these questions: Can a good writer make a story that I don’t care interesting?  Would I enjoy this same piece if it were written by someone else?  As a reporter (at large) does Franzen bring some kind of personality to the way the piece is constructed that someone else may not have?

This questions are unanswerable of course, because no one else wrote the piece in a different way.  But, when scanning the titles, some of the subjects interest me but others do not.  And those will be the real test.

This piece, about the Chicago Post Office is something that I didn’t care about specifically.  However, I have a certain love of the Postal System, and so I found this story heartbreaking and something of an illusion-shatterer. (more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–“Meet Me in St. Louis” (New Yorker, December 24, 2001)

Posted in Books about writers, Consumerism, David Foster Wallace, David Lipsky, Essays, Jonathan Franzen, New Yorker, Oprah, Sonic Youth, The Fall, The Replacements on October 6, 2010| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: PAVEMENT-Slanted and Enchanted (1992).

I decided to go back and give a good listen to Pavement since I’ve always liked them but never loved them And, yes, they were in Central Park the other night).  So I started at the beginning.

I listened to the disc about a half-dozen time at work and I really started enjoying it a lot more by the end. It’s a difficult album, one that doesn’t actively embrace its listeners.  It’ a noisy, sloppy album (and that’s one reason why I like it), but there are hints of melody within.

Because I’m not in the moment, I can’t decide just how revolutionary this album was.  Nearly twenty years later it sounds like any number of noisy distortion fueled, lo-fi recordings of the period.  You can hear all kinds of influences on the band, Sonic Youth, The Fall, even The Replacements.  So, it’s not like they created something out of the blue.

Perhaps they were the first band to consolidate these influences into this particular stew.  No songs really stand out for me, as this seems more of an album of sounds that a collection of songs.  I rather enjoyed some of the oddball instrumentals and the use of keyboards, (which seem too polished for their sound: out of tune guitars and scratchy vocals).

It’s a fun record, and it certainly sets a tone and an agenda for the band.  I’m just not blown away by it.

[READ: September, 22, 2010] “Meet Me in St. Louis”

As I mentioned in the Franzen article the other day, I missed the whole brouhaha with Oprah and Franzen.  This article, which touches on that somewhat, gives Franzen’s perspective on what happened.  But primarily it shows (his take on) the videorecording that happened for his big Oprah TV show.

Mostly it involves Franzen driving around St. Louis.  Franzen grew up in St. Louis but spent most of his adult life in New York City–which is where he considers his home.  However on the book tour for The Corrections, he stopped in St. Louis.

The producers of Oprah wanted to film his great homecoming, even though he never felt it was one.  About two years before this event he and his brothers sold their family house after his widowed mother died.  That was the last time he had been to the house, and he had planned to never return. (more…)

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Jonatahan Franzen–”Mr. Difficult” (New Yorker, September 30, 2002)

Posted in Big Books, Books about writers, Essays, Huh?, Jonathan Franzen, New Yorker, Public Enemy, R.E.M., The Cure, William Gaddis on October 2, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: R.E.M.- Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables of the  (1985).

I’m willing to go on record saying that I like the title of this disc to be elliptical, even if the band has a definitive answer for what it should be called.

So, I’ve learned that I’m a bit of a fair-weather R.E.M. fan.  I’ve always felt that they were the bedrock of any alt music collection.  But recently (with the re-release of this album, which I did not buy) I decided to go back and listen to the full albums (I listen to Eponymous a lot, but I wanted to hear some deeper cuts, as they say).

This album has a lot of quintessential R.E.M.-sounding songs, and yet it’s also not a very poppy album, so it doesn’t feature too much of that jangly guitar–the other trademarked R.E.M. sound.  Rather, we get a lot of picked guitar bits, some great bass (a very underappreciated aspect of the band) and a lot of one of my favorite things: Peter Buck’s backing vocals.

There are a  few “hits” on this disc, songs that I love very much, but this disc also features a bunch of songs that don’t really excite me.  In fact, the back end of the disc is kind of ho hum. “Green Grow the Rushes” is a nice enough song.  “Kohoutek” just never really grabs me.  “Auctioneer (Another Engine)” is a pretty interesting experiment: the minor chord vocals section in the middle are rather creepy (and the guitar sounds a bit like an early-80s Cure song).  It’s my favorite track in the back of the disc.  The last two songs are gentle folk songs that are, again, nice, but not mind blowing.

Of course the front half of the disc is full of weird gems. “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” is a bizarre, off kilter delight.  And that weird string section at the end is only part of the oddity of it. “Maps and Legends” is a fascinating song that just seems chock full of noises (like an acoustic Public Enemy track) that keeps you guessing what will happen next.

“Driver 8” begins my favorite section of the disc.  “8” is one of the major highlights of this disc.  It’s dark and mysterious without being swamped under by murk.  And while I have no idea what it’s about it never stops me from singing along.  “Life and How t o Live It” features some great bass work (and an interesting guitar riff).  “Old Man Kensey” starts out really promising with a cool bass and peculiar guitar line, but it kind of drifts a little after that.  But the final track of this section, “Can’t Get There From Here” is an ebullient song, that feels really out of place here.  It’s one of my all time favorite R.E.M. tracks, and it adds some much needed adrenaline here.

I admit that I am more of a fan of R.E.M.’s louder songs (Document is a highlight).  So this disc is a little too tame for me.  I’m lead to believe that the new edition of the disc features some live tracks that really bring these songs to life, but I think I may just stick with Eponymous.

[READ: September 19, 2010] “Mr. Difficult”

I am planning on reading The Corrections soon (and one of these days Freedom, too).  Somehow I missed all of the controversy surrounding Franzen (I am blissfully ignorant of Oprah) when it was all over the place, but I recently learned that he and David Foster Wallace were friends and respected each other, so I thought I’d give him a read.  But before I get to the big book I decided to read some of his nonfiction (I had read about this Franzen article in which he talks about William Gaddis and wanted to read this right away).

So this article is a lengthy discussion about William Gaddis.  It is inspired by a letter writer (whom he calls “Mrs. M—-“) who accused Franzen of being an elitist–for using big words like “diurnality” and “antipodes”–and for not writing for the “average person who just enjoys a good read.”  So Franzen talks about two types of writers.  First is the Status Writer (like Flaubert) where the best novels “are great works of art…and if the average reader rejects the work it’s because the average reader is a philistine.”  And then there is the Contract Writer where a novel represents a compact between the reader and the writer “with the writer providing words out of which the reader creates a pleasurable experience.”

Franzen never says what camp he himself falls into, but rather, he explains that when he was in school, he wanted to be a Status Writer, he wanted to love difficult books.  However, when his screenplay was described as, basically, a knock off, he was despondent.  So, he decided to sit down and read Gaddis’ The Recognitions, a 900 page Difficult Book.

And he loved it.  He was engrossed and couldn’t stop.   (more…)

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State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America (2008)

Posted in Alexander Payne, Alison Bechdel, Anthony Bourdain, Anthony Doerr, Big Books, Blue Öyster Cult, Books about writers, Carrie Brownstein, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Culture Shock, Dagoberto Gilb, Dave Eggers, Death, Demons, Dip-in Books, Dreams, Drinking, Election, Essays, Fishing, Food, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Ghosts, Greed, Heidi Julavits, History, Holidays, Jacki Lyden, Jhumpa Lahiri, John Hodgman, Jonathan Franzen, Joshua Ferris, LGBTQ, Louise Erdrich, Lydia Millet, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Minnesota, Myla Goldberg, Natural Disasters, Nature, Newspapers, Nostalgia, NPR/PRI/PBS, Oddities, Racism, Religion, Rick Moody, Rush, S.E. Hinton, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Sarah Vowell, Set in New Jersey!, Sex, Sleater-Kinney, South, Supernatural, The X Files, Travel, Violence, War, Wayne's World, William T. Vollmann, WPA on March 18, 2010| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BLUE ÖYSTER CULT-compilations and live releases (1978-2010).

For a band that had basically two hits (“Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Burnin’ for You”) and maybe a half a dozen other songs that people might have heard of, BOC has an astonishing number of “greatest hits” collections.

Starting in 1987 we got Career of Evil: The Metal Years (1987), Don’t Fear the Reaper (1989), On Flame with Rock n’ Roll (1990), Cult Classic (which is actually the band re-recording their old tracks (!)) (1994), and the two cd collection Workshop of the Telescopes (1995).  There’s even Singles Collection, (2005) which is a collection of their European singles & Bsides.

This doesn’t include any of the “budget price” collections: E.T.I. Revisited, Tattoo Vampire, Super Hits, Then and Now, The Essential, Are You Ready To Rock?, Shooting Shark, Best of, and the 2010 release: Playlist: The Very Best of).

The lesson is that you evidently won’t lose money making a BOC collection.

I don’t know that any of these collections are any better than the others.

The 2 CD one is for completists, but for the most part you’re going to get the same basic tracks on all of them.

And, although none of them have “Monsters” for the average person looking for some BOC, any disc is a good one.

Regardless of the number of hits they had, BOC was tremendous live.  And, as a result, there have also been a ton of live records released.  Initially the band (like Rush) released a live album after every three studio albums. On Your Feet or On Your Knees (1975) Some Enchanted Evening (1978) and Extraterrestrial Live (1982) were the “real releases.”

Then, in 1994 we got Live 1976 as both CD and DVD (which spares us nothing, including Eric Bloom’s lengthy harangue about the unfairness of…the speed limit).  It’s the most raw and unpolished on live sets.  2002 saw the release of A Long Day’s Night, a recording of a 2002 concert (also on DVD) which had Eric Bloom, Buck Dharma an Allan Lanier reunited.

They also have a number of might-be real live releases (fans debate the legitimacy of many of these).  Picking a concert disc is tough if only because it depends on the era you like.  ETLive is regarded as the best “real” live disc, although the reissued double disc set of Some Enchanted Evening is hard to pass up.  Likewise, the 2002 recording is a good overview of their career, and includes some of their more recent work.

If you consider live albums best of’s (which many people do) I think it’s far to say that BOC has more best of’s than original discs.  Fascinating.  Many BOC fans believe that if they buy all the best of discs, it will convince Columbia to finally reissue the rest of the original discs (and there are a number of worthy contenders!) in deluxe packages.  I don’t know if it will work, but I applaud the effort.

[READ: October 2009-February 2010] State By State

This is a big book. And, since it’s a collection essays, it’s not really the kind of big book that you read straight through.  It’s a perfect dip in book.  And that’s why it took me so long to get through.

I would love to spend a huge amount of time devoting a post to each essay in the book.  But, well, there’s 51 (including D.C.) and quite a few of them I read so long ago I couldn’t say anything meaningful about.  But I will summarize or at least give a sentence about each essay, because they’re all so different.

I’ll also say that I read the Introduction and Preface last (which may have been a mistake, but whatever).  The Preface reveals that what I took to be a flaw in the book was actually intentional.  But let me back up and set up the book better.

The catalyst for the book is the WPA American Guide Series and sort of Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley.  The WPA Guides were written in the 1930s as part of the Works Progress Administration.  48 guide books were written, one for each state.  Some famous writers wrote the books, but they were ultimately edited (and many say watered down) by a committee.  I haven’t read any of them, but am quite interested in them (and am looking to get the New Jersey one).  Each guide was multiple hundreds of pages (the New Jersey one is over 800).

State By State is written in the spirit of that series, except the whole book is 500 pages (which is about 10 pages per state, give or take).  And, once again, famous writers were asked to contribute (no committee edited this book, though).  I’ve included the entire list of authors at the end of the post, for quick access.

So I started the book with New Jersey, of course.  I didn’t realize who Anthony Bourdain was until I looked him up in the contributor’s list (I’m sure he is thrilled to hear that).  And his contribution was simultaneously exciting and disappointing,.  Exciting because he and I had quite similar upbringings: he grew up in North Jersey (although in the wealitheir county next to mine) and had similar (although, again, more wealthy) experiences. The disappointing thing for me was that Bourdain fled the state  for New York City (and, as I now know, untold wealth and fame (except by me))  I felt that his fleeing the state, while something many people aspire to, is not really representative of the residents of the state as a whole.

And that dissatisfaction is what I thought of as the flaw of the book (until I read the Preface).  In the Preface, Matt Weiland explains that they asked all different authors to write about states.  They asked some natives, they asked some moved-ins, they asked some temporary residents and they asked a couple of people to go to a state for the first time.  In reality, this decision makes for a very diverse and highly entertaining reading.  In my idealized world, I feel like it’s disingenuous to have people who just stop in to give their impression of an area.  But hey, that’s not the kind of book they wanted to compile, and I did enjoy what they gave us, so idealism be damned.

For most of the book, whenever I read an essay by someone who wasn’t a native or a resident of a state, I assumed that there weren’t any famous writers from that state.  I’ve no idea if that played into anything or not.  From what I gather, they had a list of authors, and a list of states (I was delighted to read that three people wanted to write about New Jersey-if the other two writers ever decided to put 1,000 words  to paper, I’d love to read them (hey editors, how about State by State Bonus Features online, including any extra essays that people may have wanted to write).

From New Jersey, I proceeded alphabetically.  And, I have to say that I’m a little glad I did.  I say this because the first few states in the book come across as rather negative and kind of unpleasant.  Alabama (written by George Packer) comes across as downtrodden, like a place you’d really have to love to live there.  Even Alaska, which ended up being a very cool story, felt like a veil of oppression resided over the state (or at  least the part of the state that Paul Greenberg wrote bout.)  But what I liked about this essay and the book in general was that the authors often focused on unexpected or little known aspects of each state.  So the Alaska essay focused on Native fisherman and the salmon industry.  Obviously it doesn’t do justice to the rest of that enormous state,  but that’s not what the book is about.

The book is meant to be a personal account of the author’s experiences in the state. (more…)

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100 Page Tribute to David Foster Wallace–Sonora Review 55/56 (2009)

Posted in Austin City Limits, Big Books, Books about writers, Bret Easton Ellis, Charles Bock, Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demons, Eschaton, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Greg Carlisle, Harper's, History, Infinite Summer, Jonathan Franzen, Karen Green, Ken Kalfus, Language, McSweeney's, Premiere, Research, Rick Moody, Sonora Review, Suicide, Sven Birkerts, The Decemberists, Tom Bissell, Word usage on January 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE DECEMBERISTS-Austin City Limits (2007).

I’ve recently discovered the awesomeness of Austin City Limits.  And in the two or so years that I’ve been watching, I’ve seen some great live shows (even is most bands are reduced to 30 minutes).  This re-broadcast of The Decemberists, however, just blew me away.

The concert comes from The Crane Wife tour, and it is just a wonderful exploration of this fantastic CD.  I’ve liked the Decemberists for years, and have listened to all of their discs multiple times, but there was something about this recording, in particular the wailing guitar work of Colin Meloy (seeing him lying on the floor making crazed feedback was pretty impressive), and the amazing solo work of Chris Funk that gave me even more respect for this wonderful album and the band.

It is highly recommended. For more info see here.

[READ: January 14, 2010] 100 Page Tribute to David Foster Wallace

I was able to order a copy of this journal directly from The University of Arizona and received it not too long ago.  It is a two part issue (55/56) that is chock full of all kinds of things, including this 100 page tribute to DFW.  I intend to read the whole thing, or at least more than just the DFW stuff, but as I don’t see that happening too soon, I wanted to address this tribute section directly.

DFW received his MFA from UA and he was also an editor at Sonora Review.  He also published “/Solomon Silverfish/” there shortly after getting his MFA.  So the tributes make sense from this publication.  All of the tributes here come from varied people and are all either interesting or moving to the Wallace fan. (more…)

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The Fifth Column (1996) & The Flexicon (1998)

Posted in A.M. Homes, Albert Goldbarth, Books about writers, Constellation Records, David Foster Wallace, Diane Ackerman, Eric Chenaux, Exquisite Corpse, Funny (strange), Gangsters, Infinite Summer, Irvine Welsh, Jonathan Franzen, Meta, Oddities, Paul Debraski, Poetry, Postmoderism, Rick Moody, Sex, Short Story, Smarty Pants, Susan Daitch, Violence on October 6, 2009| 1 Comment »

coprseSOUNDTRACK: ERIC CHENAUX-Sloppy Ground [CST052] (2008).

sloppy

It took several listens before I fully enjoyed this disc.  There’s something about Chenaux’s voice that is very calming, almost soporific.  And, since his general songwriting style is kind of ambient and almost formless–with no real choruses or even rhythms, the disc tends to get lost in the ether.  There’s also some unusual instrumentation (electric harp & guitarjo (!)) too, which continues the otherworldly feel of the disc.

What really hooked me into the disc though was the three “funk marches” that distinguish themselves from the rest of the disc.  “Have I Lost My Eyes” comes in like a raging gust of fresh air after the first three drifting tracks.  It’s got a strong melody and raw drums that propel this fantastic track.  “Boon Harp” & “Old Peculiar” have a similar strong vibe.  And they are really the anchors of this disc.

The rest of the album isn’t bad, I just find it hard to listen to in one lengthy sitting.  The opening three songs tend to drift a round a little too much.  But one at a time, these songs are pretty cool.

[READ: Last Week of September 2009] The Fifth Column & The Flexicon

These two pieces were part of the list of uncollected David Foster Wallace publications.  The difference with thee two pieces is that he plays a small role along with several other authors.  Both of these pieces are sort of a exquisite corpse idea. Although unlike a true exquisite corpse, (in which the author sees only a little of the end of the previous author’s work) it’s pretty clear that the authors had access to the entire work.  The quotes in bold are from The Howling Fantods.

For a delightful exquisite corpse piece that I authored see the untitled comic strip on my website.  About ten years ago I started an exquisite corpse comic strip and sent it to a number of people who all had a lot of fun continuing the story.  I have finally put it online at paulswalls.com/comic.  (See, artists, I told you I’d do something with the cartoons some day!) (more…)

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