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Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Jamie Allen–“Reunion” (Grantland Quarterly, No 2, 2012)

Posted in Arcade Fire, Baseball, Grantland, Jamie Allen, Short Story on May 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TIMES NEW ROMAN-“Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

This is the final song from Score!  It’s a cover by Times New Viking (nice name) of The Arcade Fire’s “Neighborhood #1” from Funeral.

I loved Funeral when it came out and I’m still quite fond of it.  The Times New Viking cover is pretty faithful to the original (the vocals are really close, in fact).  But the cover sounds like it was recorded on a transistor radio.  The original isn’t a bass-thumping heavy song, but the cover is so tinny and fragile, it seems to get lost in itself.  It also sounds something like a demo.  Neither of these are bad in and of itself, but the final version is so full, that this doesn’t really add anything new to the song.

But it did get me to listen to the original again, so that’s good.

[READ: May 6, 2012] “Reunion”

I have just finished Grantland #2 and I wanted to mention this story alone because for the most part the “magazine” (or whatever it is) doesn’t  have fiction in it.

I was a little concerned when it first started that it was going to be very baseball-heavy, because the main character and the friend he reconnects with were pitcher and catcher when they were younger.  But I was pleased that the story used their baseball past as a framework to establish their closeness and synchronicity, not as the end of the story itself.

It was also funny to read a story in which people get caught up via Facebook.  It may be the first fiction I’ve read where such an emphasis is placed on Facebook as a reuniting medium—with the protagonist being unsure about it at first and then deciding it was a pretty cool thing (very true for many of us).  Indeed, the quote “How many high school reunions had Facebook ruined…” is quite apt. (more…)

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Rivka Galchen–“case notes of a medical student, east harlem, psychiatric ER, winter 2002” (Triple Canopy, Issue #2, June 9, 2008)

Posted in Essays, Psychiatry, Rivka Galchen, Superchunk, The Hive Dwellers, Triple Canopy on May 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE HIVE DWELLERS-“My Noise” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

The Score! collection finally produced a cover I do not like.  I don’t know anything about The Hive Dwellers, but this feels more like a joke than a cover.  The voice is the voice I make when I’m making fun of a song.  And the instrumentation is a series of strange keyboard notes and random drum noises.  I might like it if it weren’t a cover–and I guess I do respect them for going so different from the original.  But man there’s not much to recommend here.

Go for the Superchunk original, without a doubt.

[READ: April 27, 2012] “case notes of a medical student, east harlem, psychiatric ER, winter 2002”

I try not to have the same author two days in a row, but I included this to show what a fascinating career Galchen has had and how incredibly different her published works can be.  So, yesterday it was an article about Borges.  Today it’s about her work in a psychiatric ward.

Triple Canopy is an online journal of some kind–I’ve actually never heard of it before.  It’s graphically interesting with lots of pictures and a cool interface.

This article is about nine slides long.  It printed on one page with very small type.  Galchen offers an introduction as to just what she was doing in the ER (exhaustion from three years of medical school and an opportunity to stop touching people for a month).  Although she admits her heart wasn’t in it. (more…)

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Rivka Galchen–“Borges on Pleasure Island” (The New York Times, June 25, 2010)

Posted in Edgardo Krebs, Essays, Harper's, Jens Lekman, Jorge Luis Borges, Magnetic Fields, Rivka Galchen, Robert Louis Stevenson, Roberto Bolaño, The New York Times, Tracy Thorn, Translation on May 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TRACY THORN & JENS LEKMAN-“Yeah! Oh Yeah! from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

This cover makes me think that I like The Magnetic Fields for their songs, but not really for their singing or arrangements.  This song is pretty hilarious (every yeah oh yeah is in response to something awful (Do you want to break my heart?  Yeah, yeah, Oh yeah!).  The cover by the wonderful Tracy Thorn & Jens Lekman is much more understated than the original, with simple instrumentation.

The original is a chiming, kind of noisy track.  While the cover has Thorns beautiful voice languorously singing the lines while Lekman chimes in.  The backing music is delicate and almost sweet (a nice contrast to the lyrics).  I think the song is fantastic, but once again, I like the cover more than the original.  This is especially surprising as the cover is actually slower than the original.  But, really, it’s hard  to pass on Jens Lekman.

[READ: April 30, 2012] “Borges on Pleasure Island”

When I browsed for Rivka Galchen articles the other day, I found a few published works that were not in Harper’s or The New Yorker.  So, yes, I’m going to write about them here.  And since I’m caught up with the end of Gravity’s Rainbow, these short non-fictions were a nice balm.

I have been encountering a lot about Borges lately.  Roberto Bolaño loves him, there was a recent article in Harper’s about him (a review of some new translations called “The purloined Borges: Translation and traduction” by Edgardo Krebs) and now I get this article.  This article is a strange one–and I’m not entirely sure where it would have appeared in the Times.  It’s strange because it’s kind of a review of a new collection of Borges’ work (this one called On Writing, the first of three Borges’ related works published that month).  Although really she only talks about one essay, “Literary Pleasure.” (more…)

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Gabriel Tallent–“Men Against Violence” (Narrative, Winter 2012)

Posted in Contests, Death Cab For Cutie, Drinking, Drugs, Gabriel Tallent, LGBTQ, Narrative, Scholarship, Set at School, Sex, Short Story, Superchunk, Violence on May 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE-“Kicked In” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

Death Cab for Cutie are immediately recognizable here.  And they take this Superchunk song and make it sound like a Death Cab for Cutie song.

This cover is the rare cover in which the band takes a song and makes it clearly their own, and yet they don’t alter it all that much from the original.  The Superchunk version is slow (for Superchunk), with buzzing, distorted guitars and Mac’s vocals riding over the top.  The DCFC version features Ben Gibbard’s voice riding over the top as well.  But DCFC make the song a bit cleaner.  Rather than distorted guitars, we get chiming guitars and simple notes.  Instead of being a kind of grungy anthem, it feels somewhat uplifting.  And in true DCFC style, the uplifting sounding song really disguises something darker.

Even though the DCFC version feels slower, it’s not any longer than the original, and I think the pacing is pretty much the same.  It’s a neat trick.  I like both versions equally.

[READ: May, 2, 2012] “Men Against Violence”

This story came in third place in the Narrative Magazine Fall 2011 short story content.  It had a very different feel from second place winner.  It is set in college.  It feels contemporary and it reads young.  This, of course, means that I liked the style immediately.  I admit I was a little confused by the opening—I felt the exposition was  little convoluted and relationships were not established effectively.  But once it got moving, the story was really engrossing.

This is a reasonably simple story.  Kyle has a Hennessey scholarship—he received hundreds of thousands of dollars over his four years of college.  As the story opens he is attending the dinner which announces the newest scholarship grant, and introduces Kyle to the latest scholarship winner, whose name is (in all lower case letters) madison pepper.

The guest speaker at the banquet is Brooke Hennessey.  She is the granddaughter of Dorothy Hennessey and is currently is Kyle’s class at the college.  She speaks eloquently about her family’s donation (of the Hennessey Art Museum).   What she doesn’t say is that she ran away at 15, spent two years living in a car in Portland and that she accepts no money from her family (and has a mountain of debt).  She also doesn’t say that she is currently dating Kyle.

Kyle has problems of his own.  He recently got into a fight with a Trevor, a fairly important person on campus and he is now on a kind of probation—if he fights again, he loses the scholarship and has to back all the money.  This is why he joined Men Against Violence.  There’s a funny (but not really) insight into the existence of MAV on the campus, which leads to many unanswered questions about gender relations.  And the subject of gender relations is all over this story.  That delicate subject is handled very well. (more…)

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Julian Beever–Pavement Chalk Artist: The Three Dimensional Drawings of Julian Beever (2010)

Posted in Canadian Music, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Geddy Lee, Julian Beever, Rush on May 3, 2012| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: RUSH RADIO (rushradio.org) (since 1998).

How can this online site have been around for fourteen years and I’ve only just heard of it the other day.  And only by actively searching for a streaming Rush site.  Crazy talk!

So this site is what it says–streaming Rush 24/7.  After listening for a little while I determined that it’s basically this person’s iTunes playlist of every Rush song on shuffle.  It has that telltale iTunes shuffle–hey, didn’t I just hear that song two tracks ago, or as i na recent example, wasn’t that the song that just ended?–But there’s also a chance that you’ll hear a song that you haven’t heard in forever.  There’s even a chance you’ll hear a song you don’t like (!) “Dog Years” is easily my least favorite Rush track ever, but I heard it!

Of course it’s more exciting to randomly hear “The Necromancer,” which just happened.

I don’t understand how come this person is allowed to do this.  I don’t understand how he secured a .org domain name.  I understand even less how he got a PSA with Geddy Lee talking about something (I forget what already).  And I don’t care, I have been listening to this for the last few days and it totally resurrected my love of Rush.

[READ: May 3, 2012] Pavement Chalk Artist

If you’ve never seen a three-dimensional chalk drawing, you’re really missing out.  But they’re all over the internet, so it’s easy to find one.  Like this one.  http://www.moillusions.com/category/3d-sidewalk-drawings-optical-illusions  The most recent one I’ve seen is  a Lego drawing, and this site http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/incredible-making-of-the-3d-lego-chalk-drawing shows you how they were done, too.

The design style is called anamorphic and it all depends on the angle at which you are looking at the picture.  Literally.  If you look at it from the wrong angle it looks like complete nonsense.  And in the case of this book (and Beever’s work in general), the designs were specifically created for his camera.  In other words, he set up the camera and looked through it to get the exact effect he wanted.  I can’t quite imagine how you have to look at it in real life for them to look as good as this.  (more…)

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Nathan Poole–“Stretch Out Your Hand” (Narrative, Winter 2012)

Posted in Barbara Manning, Death, Depression, Narrative, Nathan Poole, Neko Case, Portastatic, Short Story, South, Superchunk on May 2, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BARBARA MANNING-“Though with People” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

I have a Barbara Manning disc, although I don’t remember it very well.  In this song, Manning’s voice is strong and good, but not terribly memorable–perhaps a less distinctive Neko Case?  It’s a catchy cover–a good 90’s era rocker.

The original is also a 90s era rocker. The song is by Portatstic, which is a side project from Superchunk’s Mac.  It doesn’t sound all that different from Superchunk (a little less manic, but Macs voice is distinctive enough that perhaps this just sounds like a slower version of their song).

I like Manning’s cover enough to go dig out 1212 to see what I haven’t listened to in a while.

[READ: April 13, 2012] “Stretch Out Your Hand”

This story came in second place in the Fall 2012 Narrative Magazine writing contest. I read this one first because it was much shorter than the other two stories and I needed a shorter piece for today !

I was disposed against the story from the start because of my own prejudices—I don’t really like stories set in the rural South from the early 20th century.  It’s a combination of my inability to relate and to my overexposure to clichés about the time, where everyone says “Momma” and everything sucks.

And so, when in the first few paragraphs, a young girl named Ruth has finally broken a fever and the father calls the mother “Momma” and the mother can’t stop thanking Jesus, I was not excited to keep on.

But then I started paying attention to the writing.  It was wonderful.  Ruth’s brother starts watching his sister’s fever evaporate and lift into the room.  Then he gives us this observation: “And which of these things is more miraculous: the incandescent movement of my sister’s fever, or the way my father held her.  I can’t say.  There is a place in me where these things go.”

The narrator does not conform to the stereotype of rural Southerners, which makes this transcend a story of sickness and grief. (more…)

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Ian McEwan–“Hand on the Shoulder” (New Yorker, April 30, 2012)

Posted in Excerpt, Guided By Voices, Ian McEwan, Marriage Trouble, Robert Pollard, Sex, Spies, Ted Leo + Pharmacists on May 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

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. (more…)

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Thomas Pynchon–[Week 10] Gravity’s Rainbow [Sections 4.1-4.6] (1973)

Posted in Africa, Big Books, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), James Joyce, Language, Marilyn Manson, Military, Phoebus Cartel, Political Humor, Pranks, Racism, Research, Russia, Sex, Supernatural, Surreal, Technology, Thomas Pynchon, Threats, Tool, Travel, War on April 30, 2012| 4 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: PHOEBUS CARTEL-“Difficult,” “Asylum Energy,” “November”

If I had any idea how many bands were named after things in Gravity’s Rainbow, or were perhaps tangentially related to it, like this one, I would have never bothered mentioning bands that I actually know.

Phoebus Cartel is a heavy metal band based out of Denmark.  And…  well, that’s really all I know about them.  I found this image for them online which linked me to their site on bandbase (if you must, you can also get it in English–although there’s no extra information).

There are three songs here on the site.  They are all sung in English and all have heavy guitars.  The band is clearly heavy metal inspired, but they also classify themselves as “alternativ.”

“difficult” has elements of Marilyn Manson in the singing (and even the melody). It’s a very catchy interesting song and very heavy.  “asylum enemy” has some great heavy chugging guitars. I like the part in the middle where we just get two heavy notes and a pause.  It reminded me a lot of Tool.  “November” has the most normal sounding singing in the bunch–it’s also the least metal sounding–more like heavy alt rock.  Although the break in the middle with slow guitars is nicely atmospheric.

I really enjoyed all three songs.  I’d like to learn more about these guys but I literally can find nothing else about them anywhere.

[READ: Week of April 23] Gravity’s Rainbow 4.1-4.6

Section 4, the final section is here at last.  We are out of The Zone and into The Counterforce.  The epigram here is by Richard M. Nixon.  Hilariously it is simply, “What?”  Unfortunately, I found it to be way too apt for my own feelings while reading this pretty confusing section.  While some sections advanced the “plot,” there were a ton of new characters added and, even more confusingly, a bunch of scenes that were either hallucinations or fantasies  or both.  And none of these do much for you sense of what the hell is going on. (more…)

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Jeff Kinney–The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary: How Greg Heffley Went Hollywood (2010)

Posted in Books about writers, Canadian Content, Children's Books, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Forever the Sickest Kids, Funny (ha ha), Jeff Kinney, Photo Essays, Short Books, Video Games on April 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FOREVER THE SICKEST KIDS-“What Do You Want from Me?” (2010).

I wanted to a pick a song from this soundtrack to add here.  Evidently there isn’t really a soundtrack so much as a score (who is buying the score from this film?).  Well, I’ll bet it was fun to write a piece called “Zoo Wee Mama.”

Anyhow, this song is apparently in the movie (over the end credits).  According to Amazon, you can order the MP3 that is somehow affiliated with the soundtrack.

So this is a poppy emo song.  It’s got loud guitars and a chanting chorus and it’s pretty darn catchy.  It sounds like so many other bands that I’d never have guessed it wasn’t by any of  dozen bands that are kinda punk but not really with high-pitched singers who are kind of bratty.  This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it–in small doses I like emo a lot.  I dislike that this had a lot of “Hey Ho” chanting which is just way too easy to make it catchy.  But aside from that, I would leave this song on at a party.

The actual Amazon MP3 is a “Diary of a Wimpy Kid Mix”.  I have no idea what they have changed about it, though as I only listened to the original.

[READ: April 25, 2012] The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary

I have enjoyed every one of the Wimpy Kid books (and now my son is enjoying them too, although he’s still too young to “get” them).  But I never bothered checking out this book because it seemed, well, unfunny.  Then I saw the book at Five Below for a couple bucks so I grabbed it.

This is a movie tie-in book.  But what’s nice about this book as opposed to many other tie-ins is that Jeff Kinney actually wrote it (I think–his name’s on it, after all).  There are also new drawings that tie in to what he’s writing about and lots and lots of pictures from the movie.

If you’re a fan of the books, this book won’t do a lot for you.  Although there are a few insights into how Kinney got started making his series–including some original drawings.  But if you’re a fan of the movie, you’ll learn a lot.  Kinney talks about how they chose the actors they hired (which was quiet interesting), where the movie was filmed (Vancouver) and what kind of homework he made the two leads do (they had to write an essay from the point of view of who they were playing to make sure they understood the character). (more…)

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Rivka Galchen–“Dream Machine” (New Yorker, May 2, 2011)

Posted in Essays, House, Hugh Laurie, New Yorker, Quantum, Rivka Galchen, Rock*A*Teens, Superchunk, The Future, The New Pornographers on April 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS-“Don’t Destroy This Night from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

 This is one of my favorite tracks on this compilation.  The New Pornographers grab this song and don’t let go.  It’s loud and catchy and wonderful.  I didn’t know the original of this song either (evidently I don’t know any bands on Merge Records except for Superchunk).

The original is by the Rock*A*Teens, whom I don’t know at all.  I listened  to the original and while the chorus is very similar, the verses are much slower (which is funny given their name).  The Rock*A*Teens version is even kind of moody.  The New Pornographers don’t really increase the pace at all, but there’s something about it that make it seem brighter, poppier.

Once again, I like both versions, but the New Pornographers edge out a bit.

[READ: April 6, 2012] “Dream Machine”

After reading all of those Harper’s pieces by Rivka Galchen, I decided to see if she’d written anything else that I could get my hands on.  Turns out that she has written this essay for the New Yorker (and a short story that I hadn’t seen as well as a few other short pieces).

This essay is about quantum computing.  I had recently read something about the potential of quantum computers, so I was intrigued to read this more lengthy and detailed piece.   As she states: “With one millionth of the hardware of an ordinary laptop, a quantum computer could store as many bits of information as there are particles in the universe.”  Not bad, eh?

It could also do what other computers only dream of (heck, it could probably even dream).  The key is that quantum computers are not binary.  Regular computers do either 1 or 0.  That’s all.  Quantum computers can do 1 and 0 and both–all at the same time.  Exactly what that means is a bit harder to grasp, and although the article helped, my summary is about as good as I can do.

For the article, Galchen talked with David Deutsch, the “founding father” of quantum computing (as well as a few other physicists). Deutsch believes that if quantum computers work, it validates the Many Worlds Interpretation (which is just what it sounds like).  But many physicists who believe in the potential for quantum computing either do not care about or simply avoid talking about Many Worlds. (more…)

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