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Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Heather O’Neill–“And They Danced by the Light of the Moon” (The Walrus, July/August 2012)

Posted in Bob Marley, Boredom, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Coldplay, Dance, Heather O'Neill, K'naan, Marriage Trouble, Sex, Short Story, Soccer, The Walrus, Virginity (Loss of) on July 4, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: K’NAAN-“Wavin’ Flag” (2009).

Like most people in America I don’t know much about K’naan.  This is despite the fact that this song (in a modified form) was the anthem for Coca-Cola and the 2010 World Cup and was HUGE (except in America where we like one and ignore the other).  There’s an article about K’naan in the July/August issue of The Walrus.  He is a Somali-born Canadian rapper and he is looking to break into the US market.

And that’s as much as I knew of him.  So imagine my surprise upon listening to this song to realize that it is an acoustic-pop song not unlike Coldplay (lots of Whoa-ohs) set to a martial beat.

It’s a catchy anthem indeed–made perfect for an event with lots of waving flags like the World Cup.  However, the original lyrics are impressive (and talk obliquely about his life in Somalia).

Out of the darkness, I came the farthest Among the hardest survival
Learn from these streets, it can be bleak Accept no defeat, surrender, retreat

So many wars, settling scores Bringing us promises, leaving us poor
I heard them say ‘love is the way’ ‘Love is the answer,’ that’s what they say

And yet the chorus is pretty uplifting:
When I get older I will be stronger They’ll call me freedom just like a wavin’ flag And then it goes back, and then it goes back And then it goes back, oh
Chorus aside, these lyrics aren’t exactly going to sell product, so it’s not surprising that the Coca Cola Celebration Remix has changed some lyrics:
Saying forever young Singing songs underneath the sun Let’s rejoice in the beautiful game
And together at the end of the day, we all say
Although this lyric could have been in either version
In the streets our heads are liftin’ As we lose our inhibition
Celebration, it surrounds us Every nation, all around us
And the chorus remains the same.
The remix is a bit more interesting musically.  The original is just him on an acoustic guitar with some drums.  It reminds me of Bob Marley (and references “Buffalo Soldier”).  The remix has a really cool drum intro.  It’s beefed up throughout as well.  I guess it’s easy to say it’s a sell out (but well, duh), but it’s still as catchy as the original without being too obnoxiously overproduced.  And heck, maybe people learned a bit about Somalia from it.  Stranger things have happened.

[READ: July 4, 2012] “And They Danced by the Light of the Moon”

Some stories are one thing at heart.  No matter how much you gussy them up and make them look all fancy, they’re always going to have heavy metal T-shirts under their formal wear (I should know).

And so it with this story set in the 70s in the Quebec town of Val de Loups (the fact that it is set here changes enough of the story that although the story is not atypical, it is at least in an unfamiliar setting (to me)).  Jules knows that he is in love with Manon.  Manon doesn’t know anything about love.  Jules is an only child, living in a trailer park, trying not to get beaten by his father. Manon is the youngest of 11 children (her mother kept trying until she had a girl).  She is beautiful with golden ringlets and a magical laugh and she is under the constant supervision and protection of her ten massive brothers (one is a wrestler, three work in the mines).

Jules is an intelligent boy who always gets in trouble.  He’s a class clown because he likes it when people pay attention to him, although he doesn’t really have any friends per se (when he gets in trouble, they aren’t there with him).  His last prank was an invitation to the aliens–spray painted in the school parking lot.  This gets him kicked out of the upcoming dance (even though he did a lot of the getting it setup).  He’s really bummed because Manon said she’d go with him.  Manon likes him because of the way he can roller skate.

Despite not being allowed into the dance, they meet up outside the building and go to a house in town where Jules is plant-sitting.  With the right music, the right lighting, the right setting, this would be a joyous romp of explored sexuality and post-dance bliss.  But this is Val de Loups, where no one leaves, where everyone is trapped. (more…)

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Tony Abbott–The Secrets of Droon: Books 29-31 and SE#5 (2007-2008)

Posted in Adventure, Children's Books, Demons, End of the World, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Juliet, Magic, Mystery, Supernatural, Threats, Time Travel, Tony Abbott on July 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JULIET-“My First Hardcore Song” (2012).

Lars from NPR (I’m just going to call him Thor from now on) pointed me to this song.

Juliet is 8 years old and while she didn’t write the music, she sings all the words (and one assumes wrote the lyrics, right?).  Juliet can scream with the best of them.

And, of course when she opened up the pit, it made me want to get our pit ready at home, too….

There have been replies and haters, but none can compare to the original.  Juliet has destroyed out Old Skull as my favorite pre-adolescent hardcore band.

ooooooooooooooooooooh.  Oh.

[READ: April 2012] The Secrets of Droon: Books 29-31 & SE#5

Droon grows more and more exciting with each book.  I have high hopes that we may finish this series before Clark’s school is over (sometimes it’s fun to set little goals for ourselves, even if they are meaningless).  [Since this is being published after he finished school, I know whether this came true or not, but you’ll have to wait to find out].

Book 29 is Pirates of the Purple Dawn.  One of the fun things about Droon is that old enemies keep coming back.  In this book, an old enemy Ving, king of the hawk bandits of Tarkoom, comes back (from book 11!).  But this time, he has brought his twin sister Ming with him.  I enjoyed that although they are twins they not only don’t really like each other they’re not all that alike–Ving hates the water and Ming is in charge of a group of pirates!  They plan to bring dragons back from the past to destroy Droon.

The book opens up in a funny/tense way.  Eric is in school but he is dreaming of Droon.  And then he starts talking in his sleep–telling the whole class about Droon and even firing a fireball at the blackboard!  This gets the kids in class very excited–one even wants to go on a field trip to Eric’s house to see Droon herself!  And things grows even more chaotic when Galen’s twin Nelag shows up and confuses things tenfold.  When the kids finally get to Droon, they journey to the land of Jabar-Loo.

After this funny intro, things get more serious.  There is a Purple Dawn, which means a rift in time (which means Clark will have a slightly hard time grasping everything).  This means that they have to go see Portentia the oracle who was around for the first Purple Dawn.  Things grows even more serious when the pirates kidnap Keeah–as if  the kids didn’t have enough to worry about.  And what about that green mist and the vision that Eric had? (more…)

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William Gaddis–[Week 2] JR [#OccupyGaddis pages 75-149] (1975)

Posted in #OccupyGaddis, Big Books, Books about music, Built to Spill, Death, Death Cab For Cutie, Huh?, Marriage Trouble, Modest Mouse, Neil Young, Religion, Sex, William Gaddis on July 2, 2012| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: BUILT TO SPILL-“Carry the Zero” (1999).

For a time, before the bands each took off, I lumped Built to Spill, Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse into a pile of bands I really liked but wasn’t always sure who was who.  They each have melodic sections, noisy sections and high pitched singers.  (It also turns out that both Modest Mouse and Death Cab for Cutie cite Built to Spill as a big influence).  The big difference between the three is that Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch is a guitar god—he does amazing solos which is why his songs are so long (their Live album features a 20 minute version of Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer.”

I have no real idea what this song is about, but I love it.  It’s catchy and fun with a great melody.  And, in this case it kind of ties in to JR, because JR is all about making money but his basic math is shaky.  In the same way, carrying the zero won’t do anything in basic math.  Although “you have become a fraction of the sum” is a nice refrain.

This was the song and album that introduced me to Built to Spill and I love it.  Great 90s alt rock.

[READ: Week of June 25, 2012] JR Week 2

And since there are no paragraph breaks, week two picks up mid-flow.  However, this proved to be a good breaking point because almost the entire read for this week is about Mrs Joubert and her class on their field trip to the New York Stock Exchange.  And Edward Bast is steamrollered into doing (and paying for) everything.   Gaddis’ style completely allows for the miscommunication and ease with which Bast is overtaken by Joubert and Gibbs.  While it certainly calls into question Bast’s ability to stand up for himself, it also shows how easily one can be pushed into doing things (although in real life I suspect you’d just say “wait a minute, I can’t,” at some point).  It’s still very funny and the action moves along so quickly that it works perfectly with the flow.

The scene begins with Mrs Joubert herding the kids onto a car and then talking to Mr Bast.  He apologizes for what happened yesterday,  Of course, he is talking about his disastrous TV meltdown but she thinks he means the loss of the bag of money and its turning up 3 pennies short.  Through a series of unsubtle hints from Mrs Joubert, Mr Bast winds up joining their trip to the city.  He had business to conduct in Manhattan so he was going in anyway, but now he’s roped in with the kids.  There’s a lot of sexual tension on this trip–the boys are watching women bend over and Mr Bast keeps pressing his body again “her unyielding thigh.”

Then we get our first really big scene with JR.  In this scene he and a friend (unnamed as far as I can tell) are going through all of their free mail publications and doing trades.  Everything the boys try to trade is a load of crap (a word count on “crap” would be very high indeed). So the kids start looking through their brochures: K’ung-p’a, piano lessons, rare coins, scientific method builds powerful muscles,government surplus (a Tank that turns out to be an airplane gas tank (ha)), How to Make Big Profits Overseas, selling shoes, etc.  There’s some very funny back and forth as smart-assed kids will do (he really has young kids’ dialogue down very well), like :What are you gonna do where it says “married” or what are you gonna do when it says shoe size and you put yours? (more…)

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Ben Lerner–“The Golden Vanity” (New Yorker, June 18, 2012)

Posted in Ben Lerner, Books about writers, Drinking, Drugs, Fears, New Yorker, Nirvana, Thou, Unreliable narrator on July 1, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THOU-“Something in the Way” (2011).

Sometimes you hear a  cover version and you really don’t know what to think.  Maybe you hate it from the very beginning.  And then maybe it does something and you kind of hate it a little more.  And then suddenly it turns the corner and who knows what they’re doing.

This song opens almost ponderously slowly.  I guess it’s not that much different from the original , but it feels so really slow.  And then, when they get to the “something in the way” part, the band kicks in with really heavy squalling feedback and cookie monster vocals shouting “Something in the Way.”  And I kind of didn’t like anything.  But then came the surprise.  the “oooh” part was sung very straight and melodically.  The song reverts back to the original slow vocals section and you realize that the singer sounds an awful lot like Cobain himself. And the second time when the chorus comes in, you expect it and while you may not like the cookie monster vocals, the juxtaposition to the sweet “oohs” is strangely cathartic.

Not for everyone by a long shot, but very interesting nonetheless, especially the way the feedback squalls and wheedles.

Thou has done a number of Nirvana covers evidently.  There’s a cover of “Anuerysm” in this live show (in which they acknowledge that the fans aren’t there to see them).  The music is spot on, but man, those vocals are hard to handle.

[READ: June 29, 2012] “The Golden Vanity”

As yesterday’s story was about “the husband,” today’s story is about “the author” (have short story writers run out of names?).  The author has just written a very successful book in which the main character tries very hard not to be nervous in social situations.  The author himself gets nervous in social situations.  When people know he wrote the book they scrutinize him to see if he gets awkward in social situations…which makes him more awkward…etc.  It’s a pretty funny concept.

The opening section has the author meeting the librarian.  He’s put in an awkward situation because his hands are full when she waves.  So he gets emabrassed and scowls.  Then he thinks she assumes he is scowling at her.  He gets through the encounter with advice from his shrink.

The next scene jumps quickly (I wonder what happened to the librarian) to his medical condition.  The author has to have his wisdome teeth out.  He spends a lot of the story wondering is he should have a local or a twilight anesthetic (which costs $3,000 more and calls for an I.V.). He wonders aloud a lot to his friend Liza, who tolerates his neuroses and enjoys talking about them, even though she says things like “We’re not talking about this again.”

The evening before the surgery (he of course chose the I.V.) he went on a date.  Well, not really a date (he liked to say that), but friends going out together with a single woman there to meet him.  Naturally this made him nervous too.  But he and Hannah hit it off (lots of drinks helped).

There’s a whole section devoted to waiting room art which I appreciated quite a bit.  Who decies what to buy?  It’s not like the doctors would come out and look on it and admire it, right?  This sort of melds with a discussion about the preserved letters of famous writers.  Do libraries buy emails?  Do they buy the letters of young writers as a security upon further greateness?  These ideas are pretty theoretical yet the way it is written keeps it inetersting. (more…)

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Kurt Vonnegut–Deadeye Dick (1982)

Posted in Adventure, All Songs Considered, Bea Sandler, Bombs, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Culture Shock, Death, Food, Funny (ha ha), Futility, Hitler, Kurt Vonnegut, LGBTQ, Marcella Hazan, Marriage Trouble, Morality, Play (Drama), Short Books, Six Organs of Admittance, Utopia, Violence on June 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE-“Even If You Knew” (2012).

Lars from NPR’s All Things Considered picked this as his summer music preview song.  I don’t know a thing about Six Organs of Admittance, but their discussion of this song makes it seem like this is atypical for the band (which has a massive output).  Evidently they’re usually more droney sounding. But man, this song is pummeling and wonderful.

It’s seven minutes long and opens with a simple, plodding heavy bass riff.  The vocals are kind of whispered and strained.  But then comes the guitar solo–a raging piece of distortion that complements the bass.  And that’s just the first three minutes.

The second half of the song features a quieter section–the bass is quieter, while the guitar noodles around and the vocals play over the rhythm.  The song slowly builds again, and by the last minute or so there’s another fierce guitar solo. Until the song is exhausted by the final distorted notes.

This is some beautiful noise.  And, no I have no idea what the band’s name means.

[READ: June 27, 2012] Deadeye Dick

Deadeye Dick is the last Vonnegut book that I was completely unfamiliar with.  I had no idea what it would be about.  So I didn’t realize until very late in the book, and then I looked online and confirmed that this book is set in the same location as Breakfast of Champions, Midland City, Ohio.  Indeed, some of the same characters appear in this book as appeared in that book.  But more about that later.

Vonnegut is not known for his happy books.  Misanthropy is pretty rampant in his pages.  But this book is one of his bleakest books yet.  The story concerns the Waltz family–Rudy (the protagonist) and his brother Felix are the only children of Otto and Emma Waltz.  Pretty early in the story we learn that Rudy is a double murderer.  Yipes!

As with most Vonnegut stories, this one is told in a convoluted and non-linear fashion.  He foreshadows (and really just casually mentions) a lot of crazy things that are going to happen in the book.  Like the fact that Midland City is going to be devastated by a neutron bomb.  In fact, his preface (like with many of his prefaces) tells us a lot about what’s in the book and who the characters are based on and the fact that there is a neutron bomb (but the reality of a neutron bomb is different from what he says).  There is something about knowing this information ahead of time that impacts the way you read the story.  Whether you think maybe he’s not telling the truth about what will happen (can the narrator really be a double murderer?) or maybe somehow the foreshadowing makes it even worse when it actually happens–the revelations are perhaps more deliberate.  But the style–a recursive style in which he says what happens and then he goes back and fills in the details, makes the events that much more powerful.

The funny thing about this story is that a lot happens to the characters in the beginning of the story and then not too much happens to them after that.  But that early stuff is pretty exciting and it has an impact all the way through. (more…)

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Paul La Farge–“Another Life” (New Yorker, July 2, 2012)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Drinking, Drugs, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Paul La Farge, Sex, Short Story, Unreliable narrator on June 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: EAST OF THE WALL-“False Build” (2011).

Viking picked this song back in September of 2011 as his song of the week (or however often he posted then).  I’d never heard of East of the Wall, despite their New Jersey pedigree.  (I know I don’t know every band from New jersey, but usually by the time a band has three records out I’ve at least heard of them).

This song is just over five minutes long and the vocals don’t come in until about three an a half minutes.  By the time the vocals come in, we’ve had three or four different stylistic changes.  And, by  the time the vocals have been with us for a minute it’s possible that there are four vocalists in the band.

It opens with some clean guitars playing an open (but slightly off) chord progression.  Over that comes a slightly distorted guitar and a bass playing mostly the same notes but just enough to be notably different.  Then add some drums so the song is builds very nicely.  The solo gets more and more complicated and when the drums rumble in for a climactic progression…the songs shifts into a kind of loud heavy rock/almost funk.  A new more angular solo plays over the funk riffs and it all works wonderfully.  Then the song becomes a rapid fire snare drum metal song and that’s where the vocals kick in.  I assume this is all one vocalist but who knows.  For the sake of argument I’ll pretend they are all different.

The first vocalist is a screamer–hard to understand but fitting in perfectly with the now heavy riffs.  He doesn’t say much before the second vocalist comes in.  This section of the music is mellow and kind of prog rocky and the vocalist fist perfectly–actually crooning along with the melody.  Until vocalist three comes in with a kind of cookie monster vocal which is interspersed with a different cookie monster vocalist.  By the quarter to 5 moment the first vocalist comes back, and there’s more screaming until the song ends.  It’s chaotic and cool and keeps you on the edge of your seat.  I wonder what they’re singing about.

Wow.  If I’m this exhausted writing about it, imagine how they must feel playing it.  I’m going to have to check out more from them.

[READ: June 28, 2012] “Another Life”

This story is disconcerting in that the first paragraph is a page and a half long.  And it works very well stylistically.  The whole first paragraph concerns a man (the husband) as he returns from a party for father-in-law.  He’d rather not have gone to at all, but since he is also sick and on medication, he takes the opportunity to leave early.  He arrives back at the hotel and sits down to read Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.  (Holy crap!).  He can’t focus on the book so he decides to go down to the hotel bar (with the book) just to mix things up.

There are a few people in the room, but he sits alone at the bar.  The bartender (whose name is later revealed to be April P) is very nice and chats as she serves him.  She sees his book and asks what he’s reading.  He’s a bit embarrassed, because she’s never heard of Rousseau.  But she says that she reads everything and her favorite is Emily Dickinson.  He is thrown by her choice of authors and by the fact that he can’t think of anything clever to say about Dickinson.  He fumbles a bit.  She remains nice but is clearly unimpressed. (more…)

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Tony Abbott–The Secrets of Droon: Books 26-28 and SE#4 (2006)

Posted in Adventure, Ben Folds, Children's Books, Demons, End of the World, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Ghosts, Magic, Mystery, Over the Hedge, Supernatural, Threats, Tony Abbott on June 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BEN FOLDS-“Rockin’ the Suburbs [Over the Hedge version]” (2006).

I love Ben Folds. And I love this song.  But it is not in any way kid friendly (he threatens to cuss on the mic and he does–a lot).  So I was surprised to hear these distinctive opening chords when Over the Hedge‘s credits rolled.

But Ben has nicely changed all of the lyrics to make it more relevant to the movie (it’s still funny for adults, and in fact, kids may not even get all the jokes: “around the block one more time…cause I can’t tell which house is mine”  “they got better looking fescue right across the cul de sac.”

It’s cool that he was completely able to change the song (the meaning is now entirely different) yet still have it retain that snarky attitude of Ben Folds.  True the grown-up version is funnier, but this one is still good.  Not least of which is from the crazy rant by William Shatner.  Shatner is the neighbor “Bill” who complains about their dog and threatens that he knows karate.  It’s quite funny (if perhaps a little exhausting to listen to more than two times).

I like that the end of the song includes the really heavy section (that really only makes sense with the original lyrics).  A perfect example of change that works.

[READ: April 2012] The Secrets of Droon: Books 26-28 & SE#4

As I mentioned in the last post I am completely hooked on Droon.  And my son is very excited that we are getting close to the end!  What will we do?  The series itself has always been good, but it keeps getting better, with the stakes getting higher and higher.  And with Sparr being a good guy now, everything is different!  There are only three books before the Special Edition this time–it’s a strange non-pattern he’s got going on.  The Special Editions are longer and SOME of them written in a different way, but sometimes they just seem like longer books. (more…)

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Colson Whitehead–“A Psychotronic Childhood: The B-movies did it” (New Yorker, June 4 & 11, 2012)

Posted in Alien, Colson Whitehead, Death, Demon Seed, Demons, Dystopia, End of the World, Essays, Fangoria, Fears, Food of the Gods, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Marriage (Happy), Mother's Day, MST3K, My Bloody Valentine, New Yorker, Oddities, Prom Night, Regimen, Rosemary's Baby, Sci-fi, Sex, Sexism, Silent Night Evil Night, Skraeckoedlan, Slumber Party Massacre, Terror Train, The Birthday Party, The Devil's Run, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?, The Shining, The Virgin Prunes, Vampires, Violence, Yuck!, Zombies on June 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: INVISIBLE GUY BLOG (2012).

Jonas from Invisible Guy contacted me about a project he’s working on.  I’m not quite the right fit for it, but I had to check out his site to see what he was all about.  As his About page explains; “This blog is generally a platform for unknown bands to get promoted and interviewed.”  That’s pretty awesome in itself.  But as I browsed the site, I saw that in his post Invisible Guy recommends: 80s Post-Punk – 1982 (Part II) he includes not only The Birthday Party but also The Virgin Prunes.  Much respect there (especially for someone who wasn’t alive when those records came out!).

But the bulk of his site is full of really obscure bands (lots of bands that I’ve never heard of).  He interviews band members (sometimes in Swedish!) and has quite an impressive list of publications that he’s worked for.

So head on over to Invsible Guy for a wonderful collection of punk and hardcore music as well as some iconic (and really obscure) new wave and post-punk tunes.  He’s also got some great stuff on death metal too.  Not bad for a site that’s only a few months old.  Invisible Guy has a lot of samples and videos as well as a bunch of streaming music from unreleased or just-released albums (like this demo from the Swedish band Regimen called Välkommen hem).

And here’s a video for the Swedish stoner metal band Skraeckoedlan.  The song is “Apple Trees” and no you can’t understsnad the words because they are in Swedish.  I love that.

It’s a great site.

[READ: June 15, 2012] “A Psychotronic Childhood”

The more I read Colson Whitehead, the more I like him, not just as a writer, but as a “person” (the person he presents to us anyhow.  Although I met him briefly at a convention and he was super friendly and very nice).  This essay shows that he and I occupied some of the same headspace when we were kids (we were born in the same year)—watching sci-fi and horror movies on Channel 7 & 11 after school and on the weekends.  Of course, I didn’t really get into horror movies until much later them him (his first time was when his parents took him to  a horror film in the theater at the age of 5).  FIVE!

These early horror movies really shaped his outlook.  He lists about 70 movies in this article, of which I have seen at least half (although more from MST3K than actually sitting through them unaccompanied) and his summaries about them (four or five parenthetical words) are apt and often hilarious:

  • Food of the Gods (giant chickens rain pecking doom on a small island)
  • Alien (an outbreak of tummy trouble among space miners)
  • Demon Seed (rom-com about a horny computer that wants to impregnate Julie Christie)
  • The Devil’s Run (A negligible and mind-numbing film, notable only for the utter ineptitude of its attempt to cash in on the brief occult-movie fad that followed Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.

The Devil’s Run is the first movie he saw, back in 1975, in the theater.  He says that there was something good in it, that it really captured the element of terror when your loved one turns on you.  And he tapped into this for his novel Zone One.

Then he reflects back on 1981, when his family bought a VCR and he and his brother would head to Crazy Eddie (remember Crazy Eddie?) to rent 5 movies for the weekend (I didn’t even know they rented movies!).  The movies were inevitably 4 horror movies and one mainstream film.  And the family would gather by the TV and watch together.  How wholesome!  Except when you read what they were watching (I can’t IMAGINE my family watching these together when I was a kid–even now, Sarah hates horror films).   This is getting into the era of Friday the 13ths and Halloweens as well as classics like Terror Train, Prom Night, Slumber Party Massacre, Silent Night, Evil Night, Mother’s Day and My Bloody Valentine (“not even the holidays, hallmark or otherwise were safe”). (more…)

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Junot Díaz–“Monstro” (New Yorker, June 4 & 11, 2012)

Posted in Anarchy, Culture Shock, Death, Disease, Dystopia, End of the World, James Joyce, Junot Díaz, Lush, My Bloody Valentine, New Yorker, Now, Now, Short Story, Supernatural, William Faulkner, Zombies on June 26, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NOW,NOW-“Thread” (2012).

I really enjoyed Now, Now’s last single “Dead Oaks” quite a lot, and here’s another one.  A beautiful shoegazer song, hints of My Bloody Valentine, hints of early Lush.  The singer has a great voice soaring over the chugging and swirling guitar chords.

The song is smooth and dreamy, but when the guitar solo comes in, it’s kind of jagged and really unexpected–a nice treat to keep a sing from becoming too obvious.

“Now, Now” is kind of a crazy name for a band–i assumed that it would be difficult for search engines to find them.  But no.  Type in now now and there they are.

[READ: June 20, 2012] “Monstro”

I’ve read a bunch of stories by Díaz, and I was a little surprised to see him in a sci-fi issue.  Although his characters are typically nerdy sci-fi fantasy geeks, his stories are pretty much all about reality–scoring women, losing money, fighting cancer, getting women back.  And, that’s what this story is about too.

One thing that I especially liked about the story is that it is such a conventional Díaz story–his main character g0es to the Dominican Republic to be with his ailing mom.  (They live in the States but her medical costs would be much cheaper there).  So he goes to the DR for the summer.  And he meets up with a fellow Brown student who just happens to be a Very Important Person in the DR (he’s related to the 99th most wealthy person on the planet).  And this guy, Alex, hooks him up well–he gives the narrator the royal treatment all over the country.  Alex also introduces him to Mysty, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.

And so they spend the summer together.  The narrator knows that Mysty is out of his league, but he lusts after her anyhow.  He confirms with Alex several times that the two of them are not an item, and that seems to be true. It’s clear that Mysty likes him–he doesn’t put up with Alex’s shit or with hers, but it’s also clear that they will never be together.

Díaz doesn’t skimp on the story either–we learn all about Alex’s background (and the fact that despite all of his wealth, he’s not coasting–he’s pulling down a 4.0 from Brown).  We also learn all about Mysty–her history, her desires and her disdain for the Dominican Republic.  And, naturally we learn all about the narrators mother–what’s wrong with her, how she’s coping and how she’s tells him that he doesn’t have  to stick around–he’s not doing her any favors.  And so he leaves her to have fun with his friends.  As he says, “What an asshole, right? What a shallow motherfucker.  But I was nineteen–and what is nineteen, if not for shallow?” (more…)

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William Gaddis–[Week 1] JR [# OccupyGaddis pages 1-75] (1975)

Posted in #OccupyGaddis, Big Books, Books about music, Camille Saint-Saëns, Death, Huh?, Marriage Trouble, Music, Pablo Picasso, Religion, Richard Wagner, Sex, William Gaddis on June 25, 2012| 2 Comments »

The edition I’m using.

SOUNDTRACK: RICHARD WAGNER-“Ride of the Valkyries” (1856).

Possibly the most famous piece of music from any opera (known for a billion reasons other than the opera itself).  This song was introduced to be by Bugs Bunny.  And then cemented in my consciousness in Apocalypse Now.

It’s really impossible for me to listen to it without seeing helicopters dropping napalm.

I’ve never seen it performed before.  Most of us think of it as an instrumental, but there are vocals, and they add a lot to the performance.  I also didn’t realize that the whole first minutes is a prelude to the third Act–with a darkened stage.  I just watched this version by the Danish Royal Opera in which the setting is updated.  The Stage is amazing and it’s a pretty powerful image, that won’t leave me head too soon.  And of course, the women sound phenomenal.

Smells like victory to me.

[READ: Week of June 19, 2012] JR Week 1

And so begins the saga of JR.  A little of my background:

I read JR about a decade ago.  I recall the structure and some of what happens, but not enough to actually remember anything ahead of time, plotwise.

Usually for these weekly group reads, I post fairly detailed recaps of the book.  And usually I do that because there’s so much going on in a large book, that it’s one way for me to keep track.  JR is going to be a little different.  If you’ve gotten this far in the book, you’ll notice that there’s not a lot of plot going on.  There’s a few scenes with lots of dialogue and maybe something comes of it, maybe not.  So, I’m certainly not going to try to recap everything that happens in the dialogue, nor am I even going to try to figure out who said what or even who is in every conversation–I’m not even sure that’s possible.  But I am going to talk about each scene a bit and see if I can pick out anything that seems important.

The book strikes me as being like an unedited film.  Or like a Picasso–Gaddis wants to show you everything, and let you pick out the important bits.  And so the book feels like a boom mike has been inserted into a room or scene.  We’re not really sure who everyone is, or even who is talking at a given moment.  But we hear everything that’s said. And then the boom mike pulls out and the camera pans somewhere else and the boom mike goes down and we hear some more.  It’s not always clear even that a scene has shifted–although usually a dense paragraph of prose indicates a shift in scene.

As far as characters, it’s not clear if anyone mentioned early on is going to stay with us through the book.  It’s clear that JR will be here (although his first real scene is right after my spoiler line for this week).  There’s also the Bast family who will no doubt play some ind of important role.  Then there’s a lot of teachers as well. (more…)

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