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Archive for the ‘Scholarship’ Category

John Bemelmans Marciano–Anonyponymous (2009)

Posted in Books about writers, CBC Radio 3, Funny (ha ha), History, John Bemelmans Marciano, Language, Research, Scholarship, Short Books, Smarty Pants, The Week, The Zolas, Word usage on February 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE ZOLAS (3 Tracks on CBC 3 Radio) (2009).

I must have heard “The Great Collapse” on CBC 3 a few weeks ago because I heard it today and it was so catchy I was sure that I knew the band.  And yet, when I saw the artist, I’d never heard of them before.

But it was so catchy I had to investigate.

The Zolas are from Vancouver, BC and must be the least self-promoting band ever.  They have a Myspace and a Facebook site, but man it was hard to find anything about their CD. It’s available at Amazon (.ca and .com) but it’s for sale at a much more reasonable price here. (Ah, except that it’s $11 shipping to the States, which is more than the disc itself.)

The band list says there’s only two member and that they were previously (or concurrently) in a band called Lotus Children.  But that this incarnation of their songwriting chops is a bit more dramatic, baroque even.

And these three songs have instantly made me want to get their disc.  They are poppy, with wonderful choruses, and yet there are tempo changes and falsettos and surprise twists and turns.

“You’re Too Cool” has about three completely different songs in it, starting as a rollicking rock song, having a rousing chorus, and then, in the middle rather than a bridge we get almost a completely new, mellow song.  “The Great Collapse” is a piano fueled romper with the real catch being the unexpected minor chord at the end of the verses.  The third song “Marlaina Kamikaze” alters the style from the other two with a magnificent guitar intro.  Although it also shifts at the midpoint to include more piano marching type music.  And another killer chorus.  The bridge then comes from out of nowhere (or perhaps from the circus) with a great piano breakdown section, slowly building up to the chanting chorus once more.

Thanks, CBC, for this band.

[READ: January-February 2010] Anonyponymous

This is the third book that Sarah gave me for Christmas.  I thought I’d read it more quickly, but I got caught up in other books.

So, we’d read a summary of this book in The Week.  This book is a collection of word origins that come from a person’s name (eponymous).  The twist is that for the most part, the people are forgotten or unknown (hence anonymous).  Anon-eponymous, aha!

There are tons of etymological books out there, but this one is very deliberately designed as a casual reader’s book.  In fact, when a book lists itself in the definition of “crapper” then you can tell the tone of th ebook?  What?  Yes:

Crapper: A toilet; also, in phr. “crapper material,” a book or magazine meant to be read in the bathroom, e.g., this one. (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–2666 [Week 4] The Part About Amalfitano (2004)

Posted in Big Books, bolanobolano.com, Boredom, Colin Meloy, Death, Demons, Foreign Books, Funny (strange), Infinite Zombies, Mystery, Natasha Wimmer, Newspapers, Roberto Bolaño, Scholarship, Set at School, Supernatural, Translation, Violence on February 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SAM COOKE-Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964 (2003).

After reviewing Colin Meloy Sings Sam Cooke, I decided to check out Sam Cooke himself, since I said I didn’t know anything about him.  Well, it turns out that I was totally wrong about that.  I checked out this disc from the library and was rather surprised to realize that I knew at least a dozen songs by Cooke.  And not just that he sang songs which I knew–they were his versions that I knew.

Granted some of my knowledge comes from Animal House, but that’s neither here nor there.

I’m not even sure what to classify Cooke’s music as, and maybe it’s not necessary to do so.  Back in the day it would have been played on oldies stations (but they seem to play songs from the 60s and 70s now).  Is it soul, R&B, rock?  I dunno.

So, Sam Cooke sang “You Send Me” (darling, you) “Cupid” (draw back your bow); “(What a) Wonderful World” (don’t know much about history); “Chain Gang” (that’s the sound of the men working on the).  And later songs like “Twisting the Night Away.”

And big surprise, who knew he wrote the great Cat Stevens hit: “Another Saturday Night” and the party anthem “Having a Party” (hey mr dj keep those records playing).

This disc has 30 song and runs about 80 minutes, and I admit that at least half of them were just okay.  The genre really doesn’t appeal to me all that much (although I can clearly tell that he was a pioneer writer (with a great voice to boot)).  I could see myself listening to (and enjoying) this disc as background music, and little else.

Nevertheless, it was really cool to learn that it was the same guy who sang all those songs, and I can now put a name to the songs in Animal House and other 50’s era movies.

[READ: Week of February 8, 2010] 2666 [pg 163-228]

This week’s read is all about Amalfitano.  In fact, this week’s read was an entire “Part” and to learn all about Amalfitano in one go.  This Part exists irrespective of the previous part, although there will be one single item that we saw in Book 1 that indicates that this Part is set before the action of Part 1.  Well, actually, it is all clearly set before Part 1, but there is one detail that carriers over from there.

As the book opens, Amalfitano wonders what the hell he is doing in Santa Teresa.  And that question is never really answered satisfactorily for him or for us (we learn why he is currently there, but he seems to dislike it so much there’s no really compelling reason why he stays). (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–Everything and More: A Compact History of ∞ (2003)

Posted in 18th Century, 19th Century, Canadian Music, David Foster Wallace, Eschaton, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), History, Infinite Summer, Infinity, Language, Math, Nazis, Scholarship, Smarty Pants, The Tragically Hip on February 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-Live from the Vault-Volume 4 (2009).

Faithful reader will recall that this disc got trapped in my car’s CD changer.  When I had it the player replaced, they sent the old one back to mysterious Toyota offices far away.  And, about a month or so after sending it out, I received a package from Toyota with my three lost discs (this one, a Black Sabbath disc and, a promo disc I took from the library to try and wedge into the player to get it to eject the other discs (that doesn’t work, by the way) which was, embarrassingly, Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne doing a duet of something or other).

Thank you random Toyota person for keeping this disc, which is not easily replaced, in good condition.

So this concert is from 1994 and was recorded in Brussels on the Day for Night Tour.  I think many fans feel that this is a high point in The Hip’s recording career, and this concert attests to it.  The band sounds fantastic, energetic and really tight.  And the music from this era is just great: dynamic and dramatic.

This disc also adds to speculation that lead singer Gord Downie is a weird guy.  His between song banter is quite peculiar, to say the least (apropos of nothing: “Do you think of your pet as a pet or a member of the family?”).  Which also leads me to wonder if fans in non-English speaking countries (and yes, I know that many people in Brussels do speak English) think or care or even mind when lead singers babble in English to them.  Just curious.

I don’t have any other Vault discs from The Hip, but this one is certainly great.

[READ: During an ∞ of minutes during December 2009 & January 2010] Everything and More

As part of my pledge to read all of DFW’s works, I skipped the fiction and moved straight to this.  I hadn’t heard all that much about this book, except that it was pretty dense.  And, yup it is.

I’m going to give a comparison for any other DFW fans who are thinking about reading this.  If you have read Infinite Jest (and if you’re interested in DFW you should certainly read that before this book), and if you recall Endnote 123: Pemulis’ high tech math formula for calculating Mean Value w/r/t Eschaton, then you will have a fair idea of what you’re in for with Everything and More.  So, if your eyes glazed when you started to read that endnote, you’ll likely want to skip this book altogether.  However, if you plugged through with that endnote and you didn’t care that you didn’t get it, but you kind of enjoyed it because despite the math, it is very funny, well, then you might enjoy this book too.

If you’re a hard core math dude and you understand what things like: ∃ and ∈ and ∉ and ∏ and ℜ and even ∀ then you’ll have no problem with this book.

But math aside, there’s a lot of funny things in this book.  And DFW is in full conversational tone, with several places where he says things like “not sure if this has been mentioned in the book yet” implying that he never proofread the thing, which we know he did.  There’s even a funny observation as to the placement of a picture (“it’s not entirely clear to me why they put [this pencil sketch] here”).  There’s also tons of footnotes.  And most of them are labeled IYI (meaning If You’re Interested), and he totally lets you off the hook if you don’t feel compelled to read these.  Although as with most things DFW does, the footnotes are always tons of fun.

He also shows his great undying affection for his math professor, Dr. Goris (Dr. G).  He quotes liberally from Dr G’s classes, citing examples, funny quotes and the amusing joke that Irrational Numbers are called ‘surds.  There’s also great joke about schnitt (which I’ll explain later).  It even opens with a hilarious (or maybe not) section about the inability to get out of bed in the morning when you think about infinity.

As in for example in the early morning, especially if you wake up slightly before your alarm goes off, when it can suddenly and for no reason occur to you that you’ve been getting out of bed every morning without the slightest doubt that the floor would support you. Lying there now considering the matter, it appears at least theoretically possible that some flaw in the floor’s construction or its molecular integrity could make it buckle, or that even some aberrant bit of quantum flux or something could cause you to melt right through. Meaning it doesn’t seem logically impossible or anything. It’s not like you’re actually scared that the floor might give way in a moment when you really do get out of bed. It’s just that certain moods and lines of thinking are more abstract, not just focused on whatever needs or obligations you’re going to get out of bed to attend to.

And but so, what is this thing about?

Okay, so it’s about ∞ and the history of ∞.  It begins with a great section about the ancient Greeks (Zeno’s Paradox and all that) and slowly moves up through to Aristotle.  I myself have always been a Platonist (yes, in fact, I have made that distinction in my life, which may say more about me than many people know), and have always been kind of anti-Aristotle.  And, for the purposes of this book, that’s a great position to take.  Aristotle turns out to be like the arch-nemesis of ∞. (more…)

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Roberto Bolaño–2666 [Week 1] The Part About the Critics (1 of 3) (2004)

Posted in Big Books, bolanobolano.com, Books about writers, Foreign Books, Infinite Summer, Infinite Zombies, Natasha Wimmer, Pixies, Research, Roberto Bolaño, Scholarship, Sex, Starlight Mints, Translation, Travel on January 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: STARLIGHT MINTS-Change Remains (2009).

This is the fourth disc from the Starlight Mints.  Their music is hard to describe at any time, but this disc complicates things even further.

The number of genres they cram into this disc is impossible to count.  However, there seems to be a very heavy concentration of a sort of punk/disco feel.  The disco beats (and telltale bass lines) are very strong yet the noisy guitar and instrumentation removes the disco sheen.

And that overall sense sums up the disc fairly well.  It’s got this poppy aspect to it, but there’s a sinister undercurrent.  In my review of their earlier discs, I described them a having a Pixies influence.  And while that’s still true (the sinister part (and the vocals definitely sound like Black Francis)) their sound has evolved away from a grungy rock into a more keyboardy feel.

The opener is a short instrumental that sounds like a cartoony James Bond theme.  The next few tracks have a good 90s alt rock feel (although “Zoomba” mixes it up with some jazzy horns).   But it’s the second half of the disc where the disco sounds really come to the fore.

And, lyrically, the band is all over the place.  It’s always fun to see what’s coming around the corner (as when the rocking “gallop along” comes out of an otherwise mellow dancey track).   Starlight Mints are definitely not trying to sell billions of records, but they are no doubt building a delightful niche fan base. And I’m one of them.

[READ: Week of January 18, 2010] 2666 [pg 1-51]

And so begins the Infinite Summer-like reading of 2666.  I don’t know if this reading group has a catchy title yet (I can’t even think of a jokey one right now), so for now, 2666 it is.

I don’t really know what I’m in for with this book.  And as such, I’m not entirely sure what thee posts are going to turn into.  Unlike with Infinite Jest, which was confusing from the get-go, this novel starts out in a rather straightforward manner.  So, I think for the foreseeable future I’ll do some plot summary and comments.

2666 is divided into 5 books (which were originally supposed to be published independently).  The first book is 161 pages and is called The Part About the Critics.

I had no idea what this book was about.  I’d heard it was a great, difficult read, and that was enough for me.  I like to go into books fairly blindly, so that’s nothing unusual.  The back cover blurb says that it centers around Santa Teresea, which I suspect has something to do with Juarez, Mexico.  So, okay, I get the idea that we’re in for a harrowing tale about murdered women in Mexico.

So, imagine my surprise when the book opens with fifty-plus pages about 4 scholars of a little-known German writer.  And imagine my further surprise when the language of the book is fairly easy to read. (more…)

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