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Archive for the ‘Foreign Books’ Category

Yi Mun-Yol–“An Anonymous Island” (New Yorker, September 12, 2011)

Posted in Culture Shock, Foreign Books, Heinz Insu Fenkl, Marriage Trouble, Monty Python's Flying Circus, New Yorker, Poetry, Sex, Short Story, The Eagles, Tom Waits, Translation, Yi Mun-Yol on October 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TOM WAITS–The Heart of Saturday Night (1974).

What would be more shocking–hearing this and then going to Bone Machine, or listening to Bone Machine and then hearing this. Holy cow. Tom’s voice is so NOT Tom Waits on this record. It kept me thinking of The Eagles or something. The tone, the pacing, I kept expecting him to bust out “Desperado.”  He also has some crazy beat-inspired poetry (what the kids today call spoken-word pieces)  Indeed, these spoken pieces would stay with him in one form or another for his whole career.  But seriously, how much a man can change in thirty years!

Like Closing Time, this album has several different styles.  Primarily, it has a sloppy, bar sound, the sound that Closing Time‘s cover conveyed.  And that sound is all over “New Coat of Paint.”   But there’s also piano ballads.  And those ballads, combined with Waits’ non-gravelly voice, give “San Diego Serenade” and “Shiver Me Timbers” that Eagles’ ballady sound.  And then “Semi Suite” brings back that muted trumpet. 

“Diamonds on My Windshield” is a beat poem set to a walking bass.  It’s clichéd, except that no one actually does it as well as Waits.  And although I don’t really like the blues in general, I enjoyed “Fumblin’ with Blues” quite a bit.  There’s something about Waits’ sloppy (but not) style  that makes the song interesting.  Even though this is considered a classic, this album is just not really my style and it’s one I listen to quite infrequently.

[READ: September 21, 2011] “An Anonymous Island”

This story is translated from Korean by Heinz Insu Fenkl.  

I felt like the heart of this story was completely unoriginal in content; and yet I can’t tell if it is a common story, if it is a kind of folklorish story, if it’s sort of a story from ancient writings or if it’s just something that happens.

The beginning of the story shows a woman listening to her husband.  He is watching the television,bemoaning the fact that anyone can be anonymous these days (this struck me as a funny sentiment given how much everyone in America bemoans the lack of privacy or the fact that everyone is on the internet).  You can get off at one bus stop past your own and no one knows you.  Back when he was a kid everyone knew everyone else, a village was a family.  And as the woman listens, she flashes back.

The flashback is to when she was a teacher in a small village.  A village where everyone is related.  Everyone treats each other with respect and deference.  Except for one man, Ggaecheol.  Ggaecheol is a bum–he has no job, he has no home.  The village tolerates him because he is an idiot and he is impotent.  But whenever he wants a meal, he simply walks into someone’s house and sits down and says, feed me.  Which they do.  Typically he sleeps outside, but when it’s cold, he walks into someone’s house and sits at the foot of their bed.  He says he wants to keep the woman warm, so the men, amused by his impotence, allow this.

There’s an old Monty Python skit in which the town idiot, despite being mocked by all, does great with women.  The punch line, showing the idiot with a couple of hot girls in bed with him: “I may be an idiot, but I’m no fool.”  And so it is with this story.  The bum is sleeping with everyone in town.  (more…)

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Judith Schalansky–Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Island I Have Never Set Foot on and Never Will (2009)

Posted in 18th Century, 19th Century, Adventure, All Songs Considered, Christine Lo, Culture Shock, Death, Foreign Books, History, Judith Schalansky, Metric, Nature, Russia, The Flaming Lips, The Swell Season, Translation, Travel on August 29, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: METRIC-Live at the 9:30 Club, June 18, 2009 (2009).

I love the new Metric album and this tour supported that disc, so, it’s a win-win for me!  Metric sound great live, and the notes on the NPR page where I downloaded this give a fascinating history of the band.  Evidently they burnt out in 2005 while touring for Live It Out.  So they made solo records and kind of went their separate ways.  Then:

in March 2008, Haines was on stage, in the middle of a live solo performance, when she had an epiphany: She was tired of being sad. While playing one of the standout cuts from her gloomy but beautiful album Knives Don’t Have Your Back, Haines stopped, turned to the audience and said, “I don’t want to play these songs anymore.” Instead, she spent the rest of the show performing her favorite Metric tunes.

The band reunited and made Fantasies, the poptastic album that I love so much.

This show plays pretty much all of the album (except “Collect Call” and “Blindness”) and they rock the house!  The only odd part for me is the opening track, “Satellite Mind.”  The band chose to have the first half of the song performed with just the keyboards, so it has no bottom end at all.  It sounds kind of tinny and weird.  Then when the guitars and bass kick in (for the rest of the show, thankfully), the band sounds whole again.

The other weird thing is Emily Haines’ banter.  I like chatty lead singers (–The Swell Season’s banter is great, Wayne Coyne’s banter is emotional but enjoyable), but there’s something about Haines’ musing that are just kind of…lame.  She’s very earnest, but her thoughts are kind of, well, vapid.  So, I just skip past all the chatter and enjoy the music.

It’s a really great, rocking set and the crowd is very into it.

[READ: August 25, 2011] Atlas of Remote Islands

If you need an unusual but doubtlessly cool book, my brother-in-law Ben is your man.  For my birthday and Christmases he often gets me books that I have never heard of but that are weird and interesting.

This book is no exception.  As the subtitle states, this is a book about fifty remote islands that virtually no one lives on.  True, some are inhabited, but many are not.  And a goodly amount of them are little more than icebergs (I wonder how they will survive global warming).  There’s even one that the accompanying story implies was created from bird droppings. (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–The Insufferable Gaucho (2003) [translated 2010]

Posted in Aterciopelados, bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Chris Andrews, Death, Essays, Foreign Books, Funny (strange), Harper's, History, New Yorker, No Doubt, Roberto Bolaño, Sex, The Dead Milkmen on December 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ATERCIOPELADOS-El Dorado (1995).

One of the other Rock en Español bands I bought in the 90s was Aterciopelados (the hardest to pronounce).  Aterciopelados come from Colombia and they play a variety of styles of music.  They also feature a female vocalist (Andrea Echeverri) who has a great voice in a variety of styles.

The opening song “Florecita Rockera” is a heavy blast of punk.  “Suenos del 95” is a kind of a lite pop song.  “Candela” is a latin-infused song that sounds not unlike a more psychedelic Santana track.  And “Bolero Falaz” is a winning acoustic ballad.  Meanwhile “Las Estaca” is a sort of county/cowboy song that breaks into a fun rocking chorus.

“No Futuro” starts as a slow balald and builds and builds to a heavy rocker.  I would have liked this song to go a bout a minute longer to get really crazy.  The rest of the disc works within this broad framework: ballads that turn into heavy rockers (“De Tripas Corazón”), hints of punk and latin accents.  And then there’s a song like “Colombia Conexión” which reminds me a bit of The Dead Milkmen: simple sparse verses with heavy punk choruses.  Meanwhile “Pilas!” is straight ahead punk.  The final song “Mujer Gala” has some ska-lite aspects as well (and I have to say that it seems like No Doubt may have been inspired by them).

Although for all of the different styles of music, the disc is really a venue for Echeverri’s voice.  She’s not a rocker or a screamer and she could easily sing pop ballads, but because she chooses to sing over so many styles, she really showcases the multifacted nature of her voice.  She can hold a note for quite a while and although she never really shows off, it’s clear that she’s got a powerful voice.  She even sings beautifully over the punkier tracks, never devolving into a scream, but never losing her edge either.

Aterciopelados is a hard band to pin down (especially with this one disc).  Of the rock en Español bands, Aterciopelados had one of the longer lifespans.  They released several albums with very different styles.

El Dorado suffers from weak production, some more highs and lows would really makes the listening experience better, but it’s a solid disc overall.

[READ: December 10, 2010] The Insufferable Gaucho

This is a collection of five short stories and two essays.  Two of the short stories appeared elsewhere (which I read previously).  This is the first time I’ve seen the essays translated into English.  The fabulous translation is once again by Chris Andrews, who really brings Bolaño’s shorter books to life.  They are vibrant and (in light of The Savage Detectives, this is funny) visceral.

“Jim” is a four page story which focuses very specifically on a man named Jim.  As the story ends, we see Jim locked in an existential struggle.  For such a short work, it’s very powerful.

“The Insufferable Gaucho” (which I had read in The New Yorker) was even better after a second read.  I find this to be true for much of Bolaño’s work.  He tends to write in a nontraditional, nonlinear fashion so you can’t always anticipate what is going to happen (quite often, nothing happens).  In this story, a man in Buenos Aires, feeling that the city is sinking, heads out to his long neglected ranch in the country.  He spends several years there, slowly morphing from a cosmopolitan man to a weather-beaten gaucho who doesn’t shave and carries a knife.  But there is much more to the story.  The countryside is virtually dead: barren, wasted and overrun by feral rabbits.  The rabbits offer an interesting metaphor for the wilderness as well.  His interactions with the few other people he encounters are wonderfully weird, and the ending is thought-provoking.  It’s a wonderfully realized world he has created.

“Police Rat,” is that strangest of Bolaño stories: a straight ahead narrative that works like a police procedural.  I assumed from the title that it would be something about a metaphorical rat in the police force.  Rather, this is a story about an actual rat who works on the rat police force.  Bolaño spends a lot of time setting up the story (details are abundant) making it seem like perhaps there would be no plot.  But soon enough, a plot unfurls itself.  And although the story is basically a police story, the underlying reality behind it is fantastic and quite profound.  The story is beyond metaphor.

“Álvaro Rousselot’s Journey” was published in The New Yorker.  This story was also better on a second reading.  In many ways this story is a microcosm of Bolaño’s stories: a man goes on a quest for an elusive man.  Unlike the other stories, he actually catches up to the elusive guy.  But, as if Bolaño were commenting on his other stories, actually catching the guy doesn’t really solve the crisis.

This basic premise is that a writer believes that a filmmaker is stealing his ideas for his films (even though he is from a different country).  But more than just the simple plot, when Álvaro Rousselot leaves the comfort of his homeland things change fundamentally within him.

“Two Catholic Tales” is, indeed, two tales.  I had to read this piece twice before I really “got” the whole thing.  There are two separate stories (each story is a solid block of text but there are 30 numbered sections (which don’t seem to correspond to anything so I’m not sure why they are there).  The first tale is of a young boy who desires to be like St. Vincent, with designs for the priesthood.  As the story ends, he is inspired by a monk who he sees walking barefoot in the snow.  The second tale (we don’t realize until later) is about the monk himself.  It rather undermines the piousness that the boy sees.  On the second reading I realized just how dark of a tale this turned out to be.  It’s very good.

“Literature + Illness = Illness”
This is the first non-fiction by Bolaño that I have read.  It is a meditation about his terminal illness.  The essay is broken down into 12 sections about Illness. They range in attitude from the realization that when you are gravely ill you simply want to fuck everything to the fear that grips you when you finally accept your illness.  Despite the concreteness of the subject, the essay retains Bolaño’s metaphorical style.  Each subdivision is “about” an aspect of illness.  “Illness and Freedom,” “Illness and Height,” “Illness and Apollo,” “Illness and French Poetry.”  But it’s when he nears the end and he’s in a tiny elevator with a tiny Japanese doctor (who he wants to fuck right there on the gurney but can’t bring himself to say anything), and she runs him through his tests showing how far advanced his liver failure is, that the reality of his illness really sinks in.

“The Myths of Cthulhu” is the other essay in the book and I have to say it’s the only thing in the book that I’m a little frustrated by.  About midway through, he reveals that this is a speech and I wish that an introductory note would have given context for this speech, or indeed, indicated whether it was really a speech or not.

One of things that struck me about it (and also about “Literature +Illness=Illness” is how frequently he is unspecific about his research (and just never bothered to go back and fix it).  For instance:

For books about theology, there’s no one to match Sánchez Dragó.  For books about popular science, there’s no one to match some guy whose name escapes me for the moment, a specialist in UFOs.

Because I don’t know his non-fiction and I don’t have context (and I’ve no idea who Sánchez Dragó is) I don’t know what to make of that unspecific recommendation.  As for Sánchez Dragó, in the speech he’s noted as a TV presenter (Wikipedia confirms this).  But why the uncertainty in a written piece?  Laziness or deliberate commentary?

This essay has many elements of local information that are completely lost on me.  However, by the end, he brings it back to folklore and literature.  He also makes some biting criticisms of George Bush, Fidel Castro, Penelope Cruz (!) and Mother Teresa. Actually, I’m not sure if he’s mocking Penelope Cruz, although he is definitely mocking Mother Teresa.

The ending is general moaning about the state of Latin American fiction.  Even though I didn’t follow all of what he was talking about, there’s something about his delivery which is so different from his fiction. It’s honest and fast and kind of funny and enjoyable to read.

——

This may be something of a minor work, and yet the stories are really wonderful and are certainly a treat to read.  The essays definitely need more context, but it is interesting to finally have a chance to read the “real” Bolaño.

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Fredy Perlman–[Week 1] Letters of Insurgents (1976)

Posted in Anarchy, Big Books, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Death, Epistolary Novel, Foreign Books, Fredy Perlman, Insurgent Summer, Prison, Stereolab, Violence on June 11, 2010| 5 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: STEREOLAB-Transient Random Noise Bursts with Announcements (1993).

Stereolab are a bizarre band.  They make bubbly electronic music, with all sorts of bleeps and whirls and buzzes.  They even describe their music as space age pop.   Their album cover art is overexposed or simply silk screened.  (This is a hi-fi needle getting dropped on an LP).  The back cover looks like it’s a hi-fi test record.

This disc is a bit less electronic than future releases.  It’s more guitar drone (appropriate circa 1991, frankly).  When the songs start, Latetia Sadler’s voice is angelic and beautiful.  Delicate and sweet.  And you sort of realize that you don’t quite understand what she’s singing.  Because the song is in French!  No kidding.

And then you get to “Jenny Ondioline.” It’s 18 minutes of droning guitars and noises.  It has several parts (the song actually stops at one point and at another it plays a sample from “Channel Recognition Phasing and Balance.”  And if you listen carefully to the lyric, you’ll hear:

I don’t care if the fascists have to win
I don’t care democracy’s being fucked
I don’t care socialism’s full of sin
The immutable system is so corrupt
What is exciting is the triumph as the new nation.

A little later on the disc, on “Crest,” there’s more subversive songwriting.

If there’s been a way to build it
There’ll be a way to destroy it
Things are not all that out of control.

This is all done by those sweet, yet alien-sounding vocals.  When she’s not singing in French, Sadler sings in a fascinatingly broken English, emPHAsizing the wrong sylLABes.

Although I think my favorite moment comes in “Golden Ball” when the CD skips like a vinyl record.  It’s surreal.  Electropop and Marxism: perfect together.

[READ: Week of June 11, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [First Letters]

And so begins Insurgent Summer.

This is the first week of my second Summer Reading Book series.  I’d never heard of this book before getting the invitation to read.  But when the book was described as 800+ pages of letters between insurgents, well, how could I pass that up?

And that is indeed what you get here: Yarostan (Vochek) has not spoken to Sophia (Nachalo) in twenty years.  And he writes to her to her because she had written to him twelve years earlier (when he was in prison).  He writes back to bring her up to date on his life and to find out what’s going on with her. (more…)

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2666 final (?) thoughts

Posted in Big Books, bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Communists, David Foster Wallace, Death, Dreams, Drinking, Dystopia, Foreign Books, History, Infinite Zombies, Natasha Wimmer, Nazis, Roberto Bolaño, Sex, Translation, Violence, War, Yuck! on May 6, 2010| 6 Comments »

I’ve waited to post this, my wrap up of ideas abut 2666, until I saw what others had to say about it.  Which is kind of a cop out but also kind of understandable.  This book is a giant mess of information, and I’m not entirely sure how to process it all.  So I’ve been looking for help.  And I’ve gotten some, but it’s all kinds of contradictory.  Most people seemed to hate the book.  A few people enjoyed it somewhat, and one or two people really felt moved by it.

I think I fall squarely in that middle camp.  As anyone who has been reading here knows, I became obsessed with Bolaño’s books, and read all of his short fiction (saving Savage Detectives for a read in a few weeks).  And yet I’m not exactly sure WHY I felt compelled to read these stories.  (I’m very glad I did…there will be more on Bolaño himself in a day or two).

I’ve decided to look back over what I wrote to get a sense of what I thought of the book (I knew these posts would come in handy). (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–2666 [Week 15] The Part About Archimboldi (4 of 4) (2004)

Posted in Big Books, bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Death, Fürst Pücker, Foreign Books, Fugazi, Infinite Zombies, Language, Natasha Wimmer, Nazis, Punks, Roberto Bolaño, Smarty Pants, Translation, Travel on May 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FUGAZI-Steady Diet of Nothing (1991).

Jangly noisy guitars open the track (and then a lengthy silence after a minute or so).  And this loud/soft dynamic is pretty dramatic on this disc.

There’s a slot of really cool sounds (within the framework of loud noisy alterna-punk).  “Reclamation” opens with some harsh guitar harmonics over a kind of spoken verse, but it bursts into a great chorus.  “Nice New Outfit” is quite catchy (even if lyrically it’s very dark).  But by the middle of the disc, it feels like some of the songs aren’t quite as interesting.

Of course, the instrumental “Steady Diet” is noisy and wonderful.  And “Runaway Return” has a catchy noisiness to it.  But the band comes back to a high point with “Polish” and the thoughtful “Justice Letter” (written about favored  Supreme Court Justice William Brennan who retired in 1990).

This record is a cool departure from the first disc.  To me it’s not quite as immeiate as Repeater, and yet it still has some really powerful songs.  I find that no matter how many times I listen to it there’s a few tracks that never grab me, but overall, this is another great release from Fugazi.

[READ: Week of April 26, 2010]  2666 [pg 831-893]

Wow.

The book is over and I am blown away.  I don’t know if it was the set up, or my utterly lowered expectations or the complete lack of connections previous to this, but I had assumed that this story would end (well, actually exactly as it did, with him going to Mexico) but the 30 pages before the end blew me away.  I can’t get over how nicely he tied so much together and in such an unexpected way.  I could not tear myself away from the end.  Wow.

I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole book.  I’ll do a final thoughts post after I digest, but the ending of the book was immensely satisfying. (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–Monsieur Pain (1999) [translated 2010]

Posted in bolanobolano.com, Chris Andrews, Communists, Death, Foreign Books, Gangsters, Meta, Roberto Bolaño, The Dead Milkmen on April 27, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE DEAD MILKMEN-Stoney’s Extra Stout (Pig) (1995).

Of course, I can’t forget the Milkmen’s final release!  But, in fact, I had forgotten about it, so much so that when I played it again, I was totally surprised to realize that I knew and liked a number of these songs quite a bit.

This disc was their return to Restless records, and it almost feels like their detour to Hollywood never happened.  Back is the dominace of Rodney Anonymous’ songs andthe more chaortic, frenetic guitar work of thier earlier discs.

It opens with “Peter Bazooka” a dark meandering song that features the one consistent thread on this disc: most of Rodney’s verses are spoken rather than sung.  Which is fine, except the songs somehow feel more noveltyish when they’re delivered this way.  So even if a song like the second track “Train I Ride” is just as silly as any DM song, because it’s sung it feels more like a proper song than a novelty.  “The Girl with the Strong Arm” is even more frenetic than “Joe Bazooka” and it’s another rant (although with a more singable chorus).

But a song like “Helicopter Interiors” sounds like classic DM: simple clever guitar line, raucous guitar, and it’s under 2 minutes long.  And, while the back half of the disc is less exciting than the front, the rocking “Chaos Theory” is good fun: “Study hard and you’ll have a future, oh yeah when the hell was that ever true?”

But Joe Jack Talcum’s songs are not absent from the disc.  He appears first on “I’m Flying Away” a slow, reggae tinged track that feels too anemic to have ever been a hit.  “The Man Who Rides the Bus” is a rocking, more catchy track although again it’s missing anything even resembling a hit.

A couple songs do overstay their welcome: “Blues Song,” a parody of the blues (yawn) is over 4 minutes long (yes, the solo section is pretty funny).  Although even a lesser song like “When I Get to Heaven” is enjoyable enough (the return of odd vocal effects is also welcome).  The only real failure is the horn-fueled pseudo funk of “Crystalline.”  At this point I’m not sure if it’s wise for the DM to bust so far out of their comfort zone.

Joe Jack sings the final three songs.  “Khrissy” is a trebly love song, “Like to be Alone” is a piano ballad that doesn’t really go anywhere, but the final song “Big Deal” is a another negative song package as a humorous uplift anthem.  It concludes the DM’s output on a high note.

I’m not sure if the band should have done more after this.  And of course, there is much sadness that bassist Dave Blood killed himself a few years ago.  But I understand they still tour and they keep their website active.  DM are a wonderful staple from my college days, and I thank them.

[READ: April 16, 2010] Monsieur Pain

It is not lost on me that while I was reading a book called Monsieur Pain, I was stricken with an abscess in my cheek.  It swelled as if there was a softball in my mouth and it hurt like a mother.  And, since this happened while I was on vacation, I had the delight of going to a Virginia Urgent Care center carrying this book around with me (and the medical services were excellent, thank you all).

Of course, the Pain in the title is not a man who inflicts pain or anything, it’s just his name.  I was wondering if, since he is French, if the Pain is to be translated as “bread.”  That is never addressed.

This story exemplifies the fascinating twists and turns that Bolaño puts in his books (this one was one of his first).  In the introductory note to the book, he states that he wrote this story in 1982 and then submitted it to two different fiction contests under different titles.  He won both contests.  (Ha!).  The other fascnating thing about this story is that most of the people are real.  And while yes, that is a conceit he uses in a lot of his stories, in this one the real people are the main people: César Vallejo was a real poet (and did have the hiccups) his wife was real, Pierre Pain was indeed a mesmerist, and of course Madame Curie is real, too.

The story itself was fascinating and sometimes difficult.  (I had to re-read the scene in the movie theater a few times to get the total picture).   It is written from the point of view of Monseuir Pain.  He is contacted by Madame Reynaud (a woman he is sort of in love with, especially now that she is widow) who urgently requests that he go to see someone “profesionally.”  The someone turns out to be the husband of her friend Mrs.Vallejo (who turns out to be the poet César Vallejo–although plotwise that is not important).  She says he is dying from the hiccups. (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–2666 [Week 14] The Part About Archimboldi (3 of 4) (2004)

Posted in Big Books, bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Communists, Death, Foreign Books, Infinite Zombies, Military, Natasha Wimmer, Nazis, Phish, Racism, Roberto Bolaño, Sex, Suicide, Translation, Violence, Work on April 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-Joy (2009).

This is basically Phish’s reunion disc (after a 5 year hiatus).  It opens with one of their poppiest songs, “Backwards Down the Number Line” a song that picks up where their least disc left off: with a feeling of driving down a country lane with nowhere to go, windows opens, just happy to be alive.  The second track, “Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan” is a delightful rocker with a supremely catchy chorus “got a blank space where my mind should be….”

The third track, “Joy” starts as a simple piano ballad, but quickly morphs into one of the prettiest songs I’ve heard in ages, an outrageously happy upbeat tender song: “We want you to be happy, cause this is your song, too.”

“Sugar Shack” is a delightfully funky song, recognizable at once as one of Mike’s songs.  It’s a simple, pleasant enough track, but somehow Mike’s voice sounds weaker than usual.

“Ocelot” is a silly track (and one of my favorites) while “Kill Devil Falls” is a bluesy number that will easily be a lengthy jam live.  It’s my least favorite track on the disc, but it is followed by a more upbeat future-jam called “Light” which features delightful multi part harmonies.

The highlights of the disc are the final two songs: the 13 minute “Time Turns Elastic” and the five-minute “Twenty Years Later.”  “Elastic” is a wonderful non-jam, a thoughtfully constructed epic with many parts (although not an elaborate prog rock track or anything).  It’s catchy and moving with sweeping grandeur and easy to sing parts.  And it melds wonderfully into the delicate multipart gorgeous final track.

This is a really strong, mature disc from Phish. There’s not a lot of silliness or nonsense, just some great uplifting gentle rock songs.  It’s quite wonderful.

[READ: Week of April 19, 2010]  2666 [pg 766-830]

This penultimate section of 2666 (the end is nigh!) settles down into an almost pasotral recollection of Archimboldi (the man formerly known as Reiter) as a writer (yes the pronunciation of his name is not lost on me, although I assume it doesn’t have the same connotation in German).  And while it is not all happiness, there is more joy in these 60 some pages than in most of the rest of the book combined.

But before we get there, we have one final moment with a war criminal.

(more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–“Prefiguration of Lalo Curo” (New Yorker, April 19, 2010)

Posted in bolanobolano.com, Chris Andrews, Foreign Books, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Gangsters, Infinite Zombies, New Yorker, Pornography, Roberto Bolaño, Sex, Short Story, The Space Negros, Translation on April 22, 2010| 7 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK:  THE SPACE NEGROS Do Generic Ethnic Muzak Versions of All Your Favorite Punk/Psychedelic Songs from the Sixties (1987).

I stumbled upon this CD again when I was looking for a Sparklehorse disc (alphabetical you see).  I originally discovered this album when I was a DJ in college and the absurdity of the title instantly grabbed me.

And never has a title so accurately described the music within (except for “the space negros” part which is just weird).  Anyhow, the disc is indeed a collection of generic ethnic muzak recordings.  But it predates that late 90’s “ironic” muzaky recordings of hipster songs.

Nevertheless, it is muzaky background versions of songs from the sixties (and a few originals).  The difference comes in the instrumentation: zithers, harpsichords, clarinets, autoharp, etc.  In other words, this isn’t a guy making cheesy Casio recordings of classic songs.  This is a collection of musicians reinterpreting songs for fun (and presumably to get high to?).

The most noteworthy songs for me are “Silas Stingy/Boris the Spider” medley and The Stooges’ “We Will Fall.”  In fact, I didn’t recognize any of the other songs on the disc (the 13th Floor Elevators and The Electric Prunes are the only bands that I recognize aside from The Who and The Stooges).

So, this is clearly a labor of love.  Whether or not you will love it depends on your tolerance for trippy muzaky renditions of songs that sound like they’re from an Indian restaurant/hash shop circa 1964 (that exists on the moon?).  The CD reissue includes thirty more minutes of tunes which are all just listed as More Generic Muzak (no covers here).   It’s strange that these more nebulous bonus tracks really tend to show off how good the rest of the disc is.  Sure in part that’s because the other tracks are actual songs, but it also shows how well the weird musical approach to these songs works when it is focused with a good starting point.

The Space Negros (headed by Erik Lindgren) made several discs, but it’s hard to find a lot of information about them online.  Even their own website is surprisingly devoid of information (although you can buy the disc!)

[READ: April 19, 2010] “Prefiguration of Lalo Curo”

Even when I try to stop reading Bolaño, the stories keep arriving in my mailbox.  This story (to be released in his forthcoming story collection The Return) looks at the history of Lalo Curo.  For those of us reading 2666, Lalo Curo figures prominently in The Part About the Crimes.  And in 2666 his history is given.  So this short story is a bit confusing within the canon of Bolaño.  2666

In this one, Lalo’s mother, rather than being raped and impregnated as a young girl (as had all of her mother’s mothers) was a porn star.  Lalo was born Olegario Cura (surname Cura (The Priest) because his father was a priest).  And, as with all my favorite Bolaño stories, there’s all kinds of fun questions regarding narrator and intended reader.  Lalo’s mother “Connie Sánchez was her name, and if you weren’t so young and innocent it would ring a bell” along with her sister and friend were all stars in a series of porn movies.  The man behind the movies was a German [another thing that recurs in Bolaño] named Helmut Bittrich.  Helmut treated them well, and the whole production company felt like a (weird, certainly) family.  In fact, Connie made films even when she was pregnant with Lalo (lacto-porn!).

Connie had tried legitimate theater (even Broadway!), but eventually, her career went towards porn.  The bulk of the story is given over to (graphic) descriptions of all of her films.  But the most interesting section is about Bittrich’s understanding of “the sadness of the phallus.”  After all those graphic scenes we get this remarkably poetic moment:

he’s naked from the waist down, his penis hangs flaccid and dripping. Behind the actor, a landscape unfolds: mountains, ravines, rivers, forests, towering clouds, a city, perhaps a volcano, a desert.

Pajarito Gómez is the male actor described above.  He is the primary male in all of the porn films.  He wasn’t well endowed, but he had a special kind of presence on screen.  As the story ends, Lalo goes in search of Gómez and finds him easily. They share a moment, watching movies and reconstructing the past.

It’s an interesting story, one that fully fits within the Bolaño landscape.  Bolaño is pretty obsessed with porn, and this story is obviously no exception.  It may not be the best introduction to Bolaño’s work, and yet in many ways, it’s pretty much Bolaño in a nutshell.

For ease of searching I include: Bolano, Sanchez, Gomez

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Roberto Bolaño–2666 [Week 13] The Part About Archimboldi (2 of 4) (2004)

Posted in Adventure, Big Books, bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Communists, Culture Shock, Death, Fears, Foreign Books, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Gustav Courbet, History, Humiliation, Infinite Zombies, Military, Natasha Wimmer, Nazis, Newspapers, Paul Simon, Roberto Bolaño, Romance, Sci-fi, Sex, Ska, Suicide, Translation, Travel, Vampire Weekend, Violence, Wikipedia, Yuck! on April 19, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: VAMPIRE WEEKEND-Contra (2010).

I absolutely loved Vampire Weekend’s debut album (and still do).  It was my favorite record of last summer and always makes me think of summer fun and hijinx.  Critics trotted out the “world/ethno/Paul Simon” vibe when discussing the album.  But I really didn’t hear it.  I mean, yes  I suppose it was there but the album felt more like a punky ska album of fun.

On this, their follow up, it’s as if they took all those critics to heart and decided to make the album that everyone was describing. This disc emphasizes all of the ethnic music sounds,  and downplays the guitars and more rock elements.  I was a little disappointed by this on the first listen or two.  However, subsequent listens showed me that the songwriting was still there and it was just as strong.

There’s still lots of rocking elements, it’s just that they are hidden under the other divergent influences.  But for the most part, the album is still bouncey and full of fun summer tunes.  There are three songs that slow down the pace, “Taxi Cab” and “Diplomat’s Son” (at 6 minutes, it’s a little long).  And the final song “I Think Ur a Contra” is a bit too divorced of beats (it works as an end to the disc, but I’d never listen to it on purpose).

The rest of the disc however, is very enjoyable, and I find that the 7 other songs work just as well as anything off the debut. “Horchata” is a delightfully fun world music treat (I hear Paul Simon, yes, although come on, Graceland came out 24 years ago!).  “White Sky” has delightfully catchy falsetto screams.  “Holiday” is practically classic ska and “Cousins” has a delightfully tricky guitar riff.

This feels like a band who has matured and experimented and yet not lost track of who they are.  I’m really looking forward to their next release.

[READ: Week of April 12, 2010]  2666 [pg 702-765]

Last week I concluded that

It almost seems as though Bolaño is saying that even Nazi Germany is better than Santa Teresa.

Oh how wrong I was.  Despite the fact that I found the bulk of this section enjoyable and fascinating (twisted and dark certainly, but fascinating nonetheless), the ending killed me.  The opening’s entire writers among writers, within writers, with communist party members and secret diaries was completely captivating.  And then it is all shattered by the reality of WWII. (more…)

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