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Archive for the ‘Books about writers’ Category

Jonathan Franzen–”FC2″ (New Yorker, March 18, 1996) & “A Reader in Exile” (New Yorker, March 6, 1995) & “First City” (February 19, 1996) & “On the Bus” (February 5, 2001) & “Countdown” (April 18, 2005)

Posted in Books about writers, Cars, Jonathan Franzen, New Yorker, Pavement, Robert Coover, Technology, Unabomber, Wired on October 17, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: PAVEMENT “Stereo” on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (2010).

Pavement were making the rounds of lat night TV around the time of t their Central Park reunion concert.  They showed up on Jimmy Fallon.  I don’t really like his show, but he has consistently great musical guests.

Pavement played “Stereo” which is a song I’ve always liked (the Geddy Lee part makes me smile), even though I never bought the album that it’s on.  This is one of their weirder songs (which is saying a lot).  The opening is all kinds of crazy noises (feedback and keyboard nonsense).  When the verse starts it’s all bass and drums, but when the song kicks in it rocks heavily and crazily.

The live version features a crazy cal and response from the keyboardist (which I enjoyed a lot) and some really great guitar work.  The video also has the winner of Fallon’s “Play Guitar with Pavement” contest, although I can’t tell how much he adds/subtracts from the performance.

[READ: September 24 & 25] “FC2” & “Books”

These three pieces were short, so I’ve decided to lump them together.

“FC2” is a Shouts & Murmurs piece.  I thought that the Shouts & Murmurs were all comic pieces. This one is funny but it’s not as “ha ha” as many of the other pieces I’ve read.  It even seems to be autobiographical.

Franzen says he had just recently written a section of “The Fifth Column” for the Village Voice.  And on this particular day he received a very suspicious package whose return address was FC2.   He speculates that the content of his section of the story may have triggered a psychopath to come after him.  (The Unabomber used to use the letters FC as his code, so perhaps FC2 is his protegé).

Obviously it didn’t blow up or anything, and the revelation is anticlimactic, but it’s still a mildly amusing tale. (more…)

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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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David Bergen–“The Matter with Morris” (The Walrus, September 2010)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Books about writers, Canadian Content, David Bergen, Death, Depression, Marriage Trouble, Radio, Swans, The Walrus on October 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SWANS-“My Birth” (2010).

I was a mild fan of the Swans in college ( I loved Children of God) and then post-college, my friend Lar got me obsessed with finding their obscure releases (turns out I have a bunch of LPs that are “valuable.”  Who knew?)  Anyhow, after they broke up I lost touch with Michael Gira’s projects (although Lar got me a cool autograph when Gira last played Dublin).

But Swans are back as heard on NPR.  (NPR?  Yes, NPR).  They have a new album out, but I’ve only heard this track so far.

Swans are loud and abrasive.  Their early stuff is slow and ponderous, nearly glacial–some of the darkest music going that’s not speed metal.  But after a ten plus year hiatus, and all kinds of new musical advancements what will Swans sound like?

“My Birth” is still a bruising song.  It’s loud and heavy but still slow-paced (although much faster than their early stuff).  The drums and bass are loud.  Gira’s vocals are much faster than his almost comically slow deep voice, and now he’s sort of yelling from a distance.

The big difference is that the song sounds contemporary.  Even though it is very Swans-y, it sounds like it has tricks from the last decade (no, not autotune), just a solid juxtaposition of instruments and a very cool/creepy electronic sounding tinkling that runs through the background of the chorus (is it a chorus?).

It sounds more commercial than things they’ve done and yet in no way is it a commercial song.  It abuses the listener and we are thankful for it.  Welcome back, then.

[READ: September 26, 2010] “The Matter with Morris”

This was one of the longer pieces of fiction I’ve seen in The Walrus.  And it was very satisfying.

As the story begins, we learn that Morris is a columnist and that he writes a weekly piece which is taken primarily from his life.  His family hasn’t been all that pleased about what he writes, but he does his best at hiding the details.  (He initially used material from his wife’s analysis business, but he found raiding his own family life to be more satisfying).

And then his life encounters a real tragedy.  He can’t process the problem, and it shows up in his column.  Instead of being quaintly funny, it becomes existentially intense.  Instead of being in first person, it becomes second person (and makes the readers uncomfortable). (more…)

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Consider the Archive (2010)

Posted in Audiobooks, Big Books, Books about writers, David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, Essays, Suicide on October 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: September 27, 2010] Consider the Archive

On September 14, 2010, The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas commemorated David Foster Wallace through an evening of his readings and (I love this) Wallace-themed refreshments.  It was also the opening of the Wallace archives at the Center.

[UPDATE: November 8, 2010: The research archives have gone online, details are available here.]

There was a live videocast of the evening, which included excerpts from several of his books. I didn’t get to watch it, but I was able to get an audio copy of the event.

The evening’s readers were:

  • Molly Schwartzburg –Introduction
  • Wayne Allen Brenner, L.B. Deyo, Kurt Hildebrand, Shannon McCormack–The Broom of the System (Grand Ohio Dessert excerpt)
  • Doug Dorst, L.B. Deyo–Correspondence with Don DeLillo
  • Owen Egerton —Infinite Jest (1960, Jim’s Dad)
  • Jake Silvertstein and Kurt Hildebrand–A Supposedly Fun Thing (skeet shooting excerpt)
  • Elizabeth Crane–Infinite Jest: (Avril & Mario)
  • Chris Gibson–Commencement Speech (This is Water) (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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DC Pierson–The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To (2010) [prepub]

Posted in Adventure, Books about writers, Boredom, Corporate skewering, DC Pierson, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Huh?, Humiliation, Marriage Trouble, Phish, Set at School, Sex, Supernatural, Technology, Virginity (Loss of), YA Books on September 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-LivePhish 11.14.95 University of Central Florida Arena, Orlando FL (1995).

I have a number of these LivePhish discs.  They are universally solid releases (all from soundboards, I believe, which, have they really been recording all of their shows since like forever?).  And it’s fun to hear Phish totally jam out on a few of their more meandering songs.

One of the most interesting aspects of the series is that they almost always throw in a cover song (on Halloween, they cover an entire album by another band).

I haven’t really mentioned any of these releases because there’s usually not much to say about them: you either like Phish live or you don’t.  But this one is notable for being particularly odd.

They do an a cappella song in the first set–typically if they do an a capella track it is as an encore or the intro of the second set, but this one is right there in the beginning.

The end of the set also had the only instance (of the shows that I have) where Trey explains the audience chess match.  Many of the recordings open up set two with an audience chess move.  In this case, Trey explains that they have been playing chess with the audience at each show.  Phish is white, the audience is black and anyone who wants to just has to go to the Greenpeace booth to play a move…I have no idea how they would choose who gets to play the final decision.

There’s some other odd things in the show. “The Divided Sky” features one of the prettiest solos that Trey plays.  In this show there is a very long pause between the end of the first half of the solo and the beginning of the second.  The crowd cheers quite a bit during the pause, but we the listeners, have no idea what happened.

And then there is the extra long rendition of “Stash.”  It’s broken into three sections.  The first one features a fun audience response guitar solo.  And in this instance, he plays it in a much more staccato style.  The middle one features a bizarre percussion type solo.  And the third features a rendition of “Dog Faced Boy” which is not sung to the appropriate music, rather, the keyboards just play simple, unrelated chords while Trey sings.

Set two ends with a wonderful rendition of “You Enjoy Myself” that ends in their bizarro screaming and grunting.  You’ll get funny looks listening to that loudly.

So this set is a good one, and it stands out as unique among the others for being so darn bizarre.

[READ: June 27, 2010] The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To

I’m always bummed to read a prepub after it gets published.  Sigh.

Sarah told me that I’d love this book and she was correct.  It’s about a misfit high school boy who draws pictures and draws them really well.  Despite this talent, he is not lauded by the cool kids in his class (the kid who draws licensed characters holding joints is lauded by the cool kids).

He’s also kind of defensive about his drawing, because he gets tired of people asking him what he’s drawing.  Especially when they think that he’s just doodling.  But then one day Eric Lederer asks him what he’s drawing.  He and Eric have never talked.  In fact, he doesn’t think anyone talks to Eric.  Eric’s THAT kind of weird.

And what our narrator realizes is especially weird about Eric is that he is standing really really still: “No one stands this awkwardly sure of themselves except characters in my drawings staring straight ahead with their arms at their sides” (8).  And with that awesome detail I fell in love with the book. (more…)

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John Barth–Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice (1968)

Posted in Anachronisms, Books about writers, David Foster Wallace, Funny (strange), Gods, Huh?, John Barth, Language, Meta, Postmoderism, Short Story, Therapy?, Unfinished, War on August 19, 2010| 6 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: THERAPY?: Music Through a Cheap Transistor: The BBC Sessions (2007).

I enjoy the title of this disc quite a bit.  Fortunately, I also enjoy the music quite a bit.  This is a collection of BBC recordings from Therapy?

It’s a strange collection in that they recorded songs on five separate occasions and yet there is a lot of duplication of tracks (the liner notes deal with this issue).

John Peel Sessions (and there’s much made in the liner notes about the fact that they thought they’d be meeting Peel himself when they went in, when in fact it was just a random engineer) are essentially live recordings done in the studio.  They tend to be slightly more experimental (done after a band has toured and messed around with the songs some) and for some bands (like Therapy?) they tend to be more raucous.

This collection was recorded from 1991-1995 with a final show in 1998.  Obviously the band isn’t thinking about the future CD release of the sessions when they recorded these sessions, so it probably didn’t seem strange to record “Totally Random Man” 3 times.  But it does seem strange to listen to it like that.

The songs are definitely rawer than the studio versions.  Even their more poppy tracks from 1998 are a bit harsher.  However, their first EPs were really raw, so these songs sound much better (much cleaner).  They also include a lot of fun/weird unreleased tracks and covers.

My only complaint is that neither version of  “Teethgrinder” features that awesome drum sound that is my favorite part of the track.  Otherwise, it’s a great collection.

[READ: June 1, 2010] Lost in the Funhouse

I checked out this book so I could read the title story.  I enjoyed that one quite a bit so I decided to read the whole collection.  The Author’s Note says, “while some of these pieces were composed expressly for print, others were not. For instance: “‘Glossolalia” will make no sense unless heard in live or recorded voices, male and female, or read as if so heard.”  Um, yeah.

The first story: “Frame-Tale” consists entirely of this: “Cut on dotted line, twist end once and fasten AB to ab, CD to cd.” The cut part is a strip of paper that reads: “Once Upon a Time There/Was a Story That Began.”  It’s cute.

The next story, “Night-Sea Journey” is a proper story of a night sea journey. The secret to the story is gradually revealed, and is rather amusing. (more…)

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Stephen Burn–David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: A Reader’s Guide (2003)

Posted in Books about writers, Don DeLillo, Essays, Guns n' Roses, Infinite Summer, Research, Scholarship, Serena Maneesh, Stephen Burn, William Shakespeare on July 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SERENA MANEESH-“Sapphire Eyes” (2005).

I used to keep a list of songs and albums that I would try to find.  On this list was a single or a B-Side by Serena Maneesh.  I’ve lost the list, but someone just donated their debut album to our library.  So I’m excited to check it out.  In the meantime, I found the video for this track so I’ll start there.

For years people waited for the follow up to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless.  And if David Shields ever does release a disc under that name again, it will be more scrutinized than Chinese Democracy (and possibly less inspired).

So, why not let someone else take up the reigns of shoegazing music some fifteen years later.

This track displays many traits that made MBV so great.  It opens with a slightly distorted female vocalist.  She starts singing before a throbbing bass and noisy, distorted (seemingly backwards) guitars bring in a wall of noise.  But that wall only lasts for a short time before it breaks away and the song builds again, slowly, with more and more parts (the video shows a violin although I can’t hear it).

And then about half way through the song it does what MBV always made me do, pick up my head and go, yes, this is great.  A mildly distorted amazingly catchy bridge peeks out through the noise and grabs on to you.  Then more noise and a little backwards vocals and its over.

Other reviews of the album suggest that this isn’t the only kind of music they play, that they are also heavier and darker; I’m looking forward to the rest of the disc.   First impressions (five years late) are very good here.  Check it out here.

[READ: June 25, 2010] A Reader’s Guide

Despite my fondness for Infinite Jest, I had not read any of the supplementary books about it.  I’d heard of them, of course, but I didn’t feel compelled to get any of them.  Then I saw that this one was very cheap.  And I decided to get Elegant Complexity while I was at it (a few cents to the Fantods).  Complexity is a big honking book, and I don’t have time for it right now, but this reader’s guide is very short and a very quick read.

I had an idea of what to expect from the book, but I didn’t really know who the intended audience was.  So, I was very surprised to see the way it was set up.  The first chapter is a biographical account of DFW including his place in the new writers anti-ironic camp.  It was a good summary but nothing new, and I worried about what I had just bought. (more…)

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Periodical: Smithsonian

Posted in Animals, Art, Bob Dylan, Books about writers, Christo, Essays, Gilmore Girls, Harper Lee, History, James Gurney, Mark Twain, Milton Glasser, Smithsonian on July 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Our family visited Washington DC and went to a few museums.  We talked about subscribing to Smithsonian magazine (and getting a membership to the museums), but we put it off.  Then I received an offer in the mail to subscribe to the magazine and get a membership all for $12.  So we did.  And I’m thrilled with the magazine.

I recall subscribing to this magazine many years ago (turns out it was about fifteen years ago) as I distinctly remember reading, savoring and the keeping the September 1995 issue which featured a cover about James Gurney’s Dinotopia.  The cover is still blazed in my memory (even if I can’t find a better picture than this online).

As with many things, I find that as an adult (and a dad) I enjoy this sort of magazine a lot more than I did as a recent college grad.  It was also fascinating to learn in the new 40th anniversary issue that the magazine started not long after I was born.  It’s like we grew up together (but I ignored it for years). (more…)

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