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Archive for the ‘Short Story’ Category

H.P. Lovecraft–“The Call of Cthulhu” (1926) and “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Culture Shock, Death, Demons, Dogs, Fantasy, Fears, Futurama, H.P. Lovecraft, Horror, McSweeney's, Metallica, Michel Houellebecq, Pinkish Black, Short Story, The Birthday Party, The Sisters of Mercy on June 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

hpl;oveSOUNDTRACK: PINKISH BLACK-“Razed to the Ground” (2013).

pinkishblackAfter playing No Age, Lars Gottrich came in to show what real heaviness is with a new song from Pinkish Black.  Unlike most of Lars’ songs, this was neither death- nor speed- metal.  Rather it has a very 80s goth sound.  But it’s more Birthday Party than Sisters of Mercy.

There’s no guitars, just loud drums (with a lot of cymbals), a pulsing bass keyboard riff and some spacey high keyboard notes thrown along the top of the song.  There are elements that I liked about the story.  However, the synths in the solo give it a very cheesy horror movie feel and I have to admit that although I like a lot of bands from the era, this feels like a pale imitation.

[READ: June 20, 2013] “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Whisperer in Darkness”

Both of these stories appeared in Michel Houellebecq’s H.P. Lovecraft book, but I wanted to treat them separately for ease of searching and discovery.

After my long history with Lovecraft and after reading Houellebecq’s book, I anticipated being blown away by these stories.  And so, with my expectations so high, I was naturally disappointed.  I was especially disappointed with how normal these stories seemed.  Houellebecq made me think the stories were practically non-narrative in form—that they eschewed all manner of conventional storytelling.  That his writing was so weird that no one would publish it.  But in these two stories everything seems completely normal.  Psychologically these stories are different, but aside from content, they are fairly conventional stories.

Maybe they aren’t mind blowing because they were written nearly 100 years ago and the entire world has changed drastically since then.  It may also be because I have read all of the derivatives of Lovecraft enough that there’s nothing new in his work.  And it may also be that in the past 80 years, we have thought of things that are much scarier than these, in part because of Lovecraft himself.  Or maybe I would have been into them a lot more had I read them when I was a teenager.

“The Call of Cthulhu.” (more…)

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Cormac McCarthy–“Scenes of the Crime” (New Yorker, June 10 & 17, 2013)

Posted in Adventure, All Songs Considered, Canadian Music, Cormac McCarthy, Death, Drugs, Excerpt, Greed, Neko Case, New Yorker, Short Story, The Counselor, Threats, Violence, Yuck! on June 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_06_10_13Schossow.inddSOUNDTRACK: NEKO CASE-“Man” (2013).

neko-case-the-worse-things-getIt was Neko Case who got me out of my NPR summer music doldrums. From her new,  wonderfully titled album The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, comes this fast, rocking track.

It has everything that Neko does great—fast, clever lyrics over a simple but propulsive beat.  There’s a cool, unexpected guitar squiggle at the end of each verse that just makes the song seem that much faster.  But it is just an uptempo stomper from the great Case.

The song slows down in the middle with just a bass and drums and then as Case starts singing about her manliness, a harpsichord plays over the back giving it a nicely pompous air.  Which is quickly deflated by the buzzy guitar solo.  The song is clever and pointed and very well done.

The only thing missing is a great Neko Case wail, but the song (and the lyrics) are too fast for her to hold any notes for too long.  I’m really excited about this new album from her,.

[READ: June 18, 2013] “Scenes of the Crime”

The New Yorker doesn’t often tell you when something is an excerpt, but this time they tell us right up front.  This is an excerpt from an upcoming Ridley Scott film written by McCarthy called The Counselor.

Although I am told that I would love McCarthy, I have never read him with any seriousness.  And from what I have heard of his writing I don’t think I would like him.  This excerpt is more or less a useless attempt to try and get any sense for McCarthy as a writer.

There is no dialogue.  Rather, it is just a series of scenes–shot after shot, establishing the action of the movie.

I have no idea if there is dialogue in the movie or not.  I would be really impressed if there was no dialogue during these scenes and this whole sequence took twenty some minutes–with no dialogue at all.  That would be pretty cool. (more…)

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Sherman Alexie–“Happy Trails” (New Yorker, June 10 & 17, 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Death, Depeche Mode, Drinking, Gauntlet Hair, Native Americans, New Yorker, Racism, Sherman Alexie, Short Story on June 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_06_10_13Schossow.inddSOUNDTRACK: GAUNTLET HAIR-“Bad Apples” (2013).

stillsThis was the third song that NPR played in their summer preview show and I was a little concerned about the state of summer music because I didn’t love any of the first three songs.

Gauntlet Hair (what a crazy name) plays a kind of early-sounding Depeche Mode music with rather sedate and uninspired vocals.  I liked the second half more than the first half, probably because there was more instrumental music.

Indeed, as the song ends and the Depeche Mode-vibe comes to the fore, I rather got into it.  Especially the pianos at the end.

Shame about the vocals.

[READ: June 18, 2013] “Happy Trails”

I haven’t read a lot by Sherman Alexie, but I have enjoyed what I’ve read.

This story was quite short and was all about the disappearance and presumed death of his Uncle Hector.

One day Hector said he was going to hitchhike to Spokane.   He walked out the door and was never head from again.  The narrator says that Hector was his favorite relative (although he later says that he really wasn’t that great of a guy).

As the story picks up, it is four decades later and the narrator has decided to have a funeral for him.  His mother says that she doesn’t think he’s actually dead but the narrator says that it has been forty years, he could have come back or written a letter.  Or called. (more…)

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Annie Proulx–“Rough Deeds” (New Yorker, June 10 & 17, 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Annie Proulx, Black Hippy, Canadian Content, Death, Greed, Kendrick Lamar, New Yorker, ScHoolboy Q, Short Story, Threats, Trees, Unlikable main character, Violence, Yuck! on June 19, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_06_10_13Schossow.inddSOUNDTRACK: ScHoolboy Q “Collard Greens” (2013).

colalrdgreens-f7ef9a5569c897652952a2688c4af9911361663a-s1NPR opened their summer preview show with two rap songs.  This was the second.  The bass line is very neat—propulsive and continuous and there’s this little keyboard sprinkling across the top.  This is West Coast rap style and I like the music quiet a bit.

The rapping is unusual—some amusing voices and nonsense words, but I admit I didn’t really get into it until about half way through when the rapper (ScHoolboy Q or guest Kendrick Lamar I don’t know) comes in with an unusual-sounding voice—sped up and goofy.  And he does one of my favorite rap things—singing really fast in a high voice then ending with a low word (Gawd).

The song feels atmospheric, although overall, I’m not a fan.  The DJ who introduced the song says that he is part of the “supergroup” Black Hippy, along Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and Kendrick Lamar.  She describes ScHoolboy Q as the darkest of the bunch, which makes me think I should check out the rest to see what other kinds of things they do.  [I did, and I didn’t like them–lyrically they are remedial at best].

[READ: June 18, 2013] “Rough Deeds”

This story is set in New France, (also known as Canada).  Duquet is a timberman, seeking his fortune by amassing the largest area of woods to be exported both to the Americas and back to Europe.   He connected with a man named Dred-Peacock (I included him mostly for his name) who set him up with a connection in Scotland.

Duquet wasn’t exactly sure about trading with the enemy, the English, but money is money and they had lots of it and need for lots of wood.  And soon a fortune was made.

Then Dred-Peacock encouraged him to head to Maine where thousands of acres were there for the asking.  Indeed, Duquet was able to buy twenty thousand acres at 12 cents an acre.  But when he and his man Forgerson went to investigate, they found a crew cutting down trees on his property!  When he accosted them, they fled.  The youngest member of the thieving team had a limp and fell behind–which gave Duquet the opportunity to hurl his tomahawk at him, felling him instantly.

When the boy won’t talk, Duquet cuts off two of his fingers (Duquet does not mess around) and the boy reveals that he works for McBogle.  The boy already had an infected leg and Duquet had no intention of healing him, so he allowed the boy to die, ultimately killing him and burning his body in McBogle’s makeshift mill.

While Duquet was doing this, Forgerson was off scouting a new way to get the timber to the mill and finding people to work with them.  When he returned, he wondered where the boy had gone, but said nothing.

And there were no consequence for Duquet. (more…)

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Dashiell Hammett–“An Inch and a Half of Glory” (New Yorker, June 10 & 17, 2013)

Posted in Adventure, Brenda Lee, Charlie Wilson, Dashiell Hammett, Kanye West, New Yorker, Ponderosa Twins Plus 1, Short Story, Threats on June 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_06_10_13Schossow.inddSOUNDTRACK: KANYE WEST “Bound 2” (2013).

yeezus-51d72498d1b9891010bf6a62582ee1be614b4806-s1I dislike Kanye West.  He strikes me as a colossal ass.  So I was shocked how much I really liked his last album.  In addition to great melodies, I liked how audacious it was.  And now he has a new album (with no cover apparently) and this new single.

The song samples Brenda Lee (of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” fame) Ponderosa Twins Plus 1 and has no actual beats.  And the amazing thing is that Kanye does his own thing—his own particular form of rapping—over the repeated do wop sample “Bound to Fall in Love.”  (That’s the Ponderosa  Twins).  It’s not quite right—his flow doesn’t quite follow the melody that‘s playing.  And of course, this old school sweet song has “I wanna fuck you hard in the sink” rapped over it.  There are times when it sounds like he is rapping despite the song that is playing along—as if someone was playing it and he had to fight to be heard over it.

I respect how contrary the song is.  Especially when a new nicely sung part comes across—it may be a sample (Charlie Wilson), I’m not sure, but it comes out of nowhere and brings in a beautiful melody.  And it is interrupted mid flow as well.  The whole song feels like pieces thrown on top of each other.  And after two or three listens it starts to make sense.

Kanye may be crazy, but he knows music.  Ah ha, honey.

[READ: June 18, 2013] “An Inch and a Half of Glory”

When I saw that Hammett was the first author in this Fiction issue of the New Yorker, I automatically assumed that the stories would all be noir (especially since they all have a black and white cover picture).  Perhaps that was presumptuous as I have never read Hammett before, (although he is known for his detective stories).  But indeed, this story isn’t noir at all.  Nor is there any detective work involved.  It seems tied to the issue by virtue of his name, not the actual story (which had not been published before).

The story is simple enough,  There’s a fire on the second floor of a building,.  A crowd has gathered to watch and wait for the firemen.  Then someone notices a small child in the third floor window.  The child isn’t afraid and there aren’t any flames yet so the people kind of just watch the kid and say that the firemen will be along any second.  But when a woman in the crowd chastises the men for not helping the baby, the men as a group (7 or 8  of them) charge into the building.

They hear sirens almost immediately and they all leave.  Except for Earl Parish.  Parish decides that he is going to do something about this.  Even though he knows the other men will be mad at him for continuing on when they all left.  Then he changes his mind, but he knows he can’t leave now…now that he has stayed.  So he plunges onward, finding the boy and bringing him out to safety.

The next day in an inch and a half column, he is referred to by name as having saved the boy from the fire. (more…)

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Tessa Hadley–“Valentine” (New Yorker, April 8, 2013)

Posted in Ben Gibbard, Boredom, Cigarettes, Communists, Death Cab For Cutie, Drugs, New Yorker, Romance, Sex, Short Story, Tessa Hadley, The Postal Service, Virginity (Loss of) on June 16, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_04_08_13Ulriksen.inddSOUNDTRACK: THE POSTAL SERVICE-“A Tattered Line of String” (2013).

postalI enjoyed The Postal Service record but I wasn’t as big of a Death Cab for Cutie fan at the time.  Now, having enjoyed DCFC so much in the last couple of years, this song sounds much more like a DCFC song but with keyboards (Ben’s voice is so distinctive).

This song has been released with the reissue of the Postal Service album.  It’s not on the original but it also sounds like it might be a remix (the skittery backing vocals make me think remix).

Either way this is a supremely catchy song (Gibbard knows from melody) and when you throw the keyboards and dancey beats on it, it’s even more poppy than DCFC’s stuff.  I wonder why the album wasn’t bigger when it came out.

[READ: April 21, 2013] “Valentine”

Tessa Hadley has written another story that I enjoyed–with that same quaint feeling of love in 1970s England.

The story opens with the narrator Stella and her friend Madeleine waiting at the bus stop.  They are fifteen, have never kissed boys, and think about nothing else (especially since they go to an all girls school).   Madeleine is willowy with long curls a “kitten face” and “luscious breasts” while Stella is small, plump and shapeless.

As they wait for the bus, Valentine approaches (yes I though the title was about the day not a person).  He is in school as well but he is new to them.  Valentine has just moved to the area from Malaya.  And, as he sizes them up, offering them each a smoke, when it comes down to it, amazingly, he chooses Stella.

She likes him because he is different as she is different–they are clearly soulmates.  While her parents (well, Gerry is her stepdad) don’t ‘t approve of him (his hair, his dress, his attitude).  He barely talks to her parents when they interrogate him and then he imitates their voices when they are alone.  Regardless of what others thought or really, because if it, they are soon hanging out all the time.  And soon he is her boyfriend.  And soon enough she had lost weight (because all they did was talk and smoke), they died their hair black (a proto-goth in the hippie 70s) and they basically began to look alike. (more…)

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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala–“The Judge’s Will” (New Yorker, March 25, 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Jealousy, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Short Story, The Beatles, The Smith Westerns on June 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_03_25_13Juan.inddSOUNDTRACK: THE SMITH WESTERNS-“3AM Spiritual” (2013).

smith-westerns_cvr-208198ccccc71e78a954f8e32cfa71f6abe43e63-s1This album is currently streaming on NPR.  It is a sweet acoustic pop album with elements of retro electric guitar sounds.  It has lots of elements that I recognize (name any folkie power pop band and you can hear them in here).  But the biggest element here is The Beatles–later period Beatles–especially on the instrumental break of this song.

It opens with jangly guitars and a falsetto vocal (with lots of ah ha has at the end of the verses).  There’s a soft keyboard and some wooooah yeashs.   So far so good.

At the two-minute mark the song gets much bigger–the “whoa yeahs” get louder and there’s a guitar break which lasts for a few measures and which seems like the song will be ending (it is a power pop song after all).  But the chord changes and the song stops and the pizzicato piano comes in.  And it’s followed by that fuzzed out classic rock guitar solo sound.   All of which is brief enough to keep the listener guessing while the song swings back into some Whoa Yeahs until it ends.

It’s a simple pop song, but it has enough going on to not be completely obvious.

[READ: April 21, 2013] “The Judge’s Will”

I read this awhile back and never posted on it.  So here it is.

This is the story of a judge and the women in his life.  He has survived a second heart attack but knows he is not long for the world.  The judge is married, but he has been keeping a woman on the side for twenty-five years.  And she is concerned for her future–he has always taken care of her but she has no legal rights.  He has ensured that she will be okay in his will, but he is afraid that his wife and son will cause trouble when the time came.

His wife Binny did not react at all when he told her of his multi-decade infidelity–she acted like it was idle gossip.  But she did share the news with her son Yasi.  They knew the judge wouldn’t leave everything to the other woman.  The judge is rather surprised by this reaction and indeed, it proves to be false.

When the judge went back to the hospital, he called on Yasi and asked him to bring things to the other woman.  Which he did–although he says he left as soon as he could.  When the judge returns home, he asks Yasi to bring the other woman, Phul, to their house. Binny was upset, but accepted the news. (more…)

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Steven Millhauser–“Thirteen Wives” (New Yorker, May 27, 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Chance the Rapper, Childish Gambino, Marriage (Happy), New Yorker, Sex, Short Story, Steven Millhauser on June 13, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_05_27_13Juan.inddSOUNDTRACK: CHANCE THE RAPPER-“Juice” & “NaNa”(2013).

chancetherapper-acidrapNPR has raved about Chance the Rapper, both at SXSW and now with Acidrap as one of their favorite albums of 2013.

Chance the Rapper has a couple of different vocals styles (kind of Jamaican, kind of falsetto, also a deeper voice) and his lyrics are crazily all over the place.

I have no idea what “Juice” is about (I’m not hip to the slang, man), and of the two I like that one less.  “NaNa” is just crazy fun–it’s got a great bass riff–weird and all over the place, like slow funk.  He sounds more Jamaican here, and the lyrics are just nutty

In terms of rap, his style is quite different–fun and weird (there’s a lot of laughing during “Juice”).  The chorus of “NaNa” is a kind of whine and taunt.  And various things keep interrupting the song (is that part of the video or the song?  I don’t know).  And by the end, the song keeps telling him (or us) to shut up.

It has a feel like Childish Gambino, which i like. And I like that he’s doing something different.  I suspect with a few listens this could be a great mixtape.  You can get the whole thing for free at his website.

[READ: June 9, 2013] “Thirteen Wives”

I’ve read a number of Millhauser stories before, although I don’t recall if I generally like him or not.  (hmm, it seems that I do).

This story seemed more like an exercise or a challenge—can I write about 13 different women and given them all different characteristics.  For indeed, that is what the story is.  The narrator explains that he has 13 wives and they are all equal in his eyes.  After some perfunctory explanation about how this works, he sets out to describe them all.

And then we get the 13 one-dimensional women that he has married and the one defining characteristic about her (the one who is always in sync with him, the one who is submissive, the one who is bitchy, etc).

And really that’s all there is to it. (more…)

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Akhil Sharma–“We Didn’t Like Him” (New Yorker, June 3, 2013)

Posted in Akhil Sharma, All Songs Considered, Death, DJ Koze, New Yorker, Religion, Short Story on June 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »

CV1_TNY_06_03_13Hall.inddSOUNDTRACK: DJ KOZE-“Track ID Anyone?” (2013).

koze-electronic-beats-amygdalaThis album was selected as one of NPR’s favorite of 2013 (so far).  I really don’t know what to make of it. It opens with what sounds like a massage going on–there’s talk of things feeling good.  And then the music kicks in, or shambles in.

The main riff is weird and stifled, awkward.  But in a way that’s hard to look away from.  Then after almost 3 minutes of a 5 minute song the vocals come in.  They are quiet and harmonied.

The write up of the album says that it is quirky and compelling.  It’s definitely quirky, I’m not entirely sure ho compelling it is.  I was really intrigued where a song with that opening would go, but I wasn’t really that excited by the route it took to get there,

[READ: June 10, 2013] “We Didn’t Like Him”

This was a fascinating story about the growth of a bully named Manshu.  The narrator (I honestly couldn’t tell the gender of the narrator—I assumed it was a girl until much later when I changed my mind.  Actually I see now that the opening says “boys his own age” so I guess the narrator is a boy, but it was never really explicit) is embarrassed by Manshu.  Manshu is “my father’s sister’s husband’s sister’s son” and as such, he is “family” with the narrator.  But Manshu doesn’t play with boys his own age—he plays with the younger kids (like the narrator) and he always beats them—in whatever.  For example, in cricket he would keep batting all day.

There was some degree of sympathy for Mansu because his father died when Manshu was six and his mother had diabetes, but he was still a pain.  Then Manshu’s mother unexpectedly died.  And Manshu changed.  He lived with the narrator’s aunt’s husband who did not like him.  Manshu became quiet and, if possible, spiritual.

The rest of the story concerns Manshu’s spirituality and the community’s temple.  The narrator’s father was on the committee which oversaw the temple and when their current pandit, Gaurji, was deemed to be doing an insufficient job at the temple, he was kicked out and Manshu took over the position.  Of course, there were cries of nepotism, but Manshu seemed to be very holy now.

Until he started to go seemingly against their Brahmin ways.  Well, first he married a woman out of his caste.  Then he started asking about how to get on TV.  Then he started promising that praying in his temple could cure cancer. (more…)

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McSweeney’s #43/There is a Country: New Fiction from the New Nation of South Sudan (2013)

Posted in Adventure, Arid Gamal, Arranged Marriage, Avery Monsen, Biography, Catherine Lacey, Charles Baxter, David L. Lukudu, Death, Doogie Horner, Dreams, Drugs, Edward Eremugo Luka, Essays, Fears, Foreign Books, Funny (ha ha), Iron Maiden, John Oryem, Letters, LGBTQ, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, McSweeney's, Military, Nathan C. Martin, Noor Elashi, Nyuol Lueth Tong, Patrick Shaffner, Poetry, Political Humor, Rachel Sommerville, Samuel Garang Akau, Short Story, T.C. Boyle, Taban Lo Liyong, Thao Nguyen, Threats, Translation, Victor Lugala, Violence, War, William Wheeler on June 9, 2013| Leave a Comment »

43SOUNDTRACK: IRON MAIDEN-Killers (1981).

killersKillers picks up right where Iron Maiden left off–indeed many of these songs were written at the same time as the first album.  The difference is new guitarist Adrian Smith.

It opens with the great (but simple) instrumental “Ides of March” which segues into the blistering “Wrathchild.”  And it’s on this song that you can tell some of the rawness has been removed from the recording.  The guitars sound a wee bit more polished.

And you can tell the band are getting a bit more symphonic with the bass harmonics that intro the wonderful “Murders in the Rue Morgue” a song that feels long but actually isn’t.  It has several parts that all seem to signal the end until Clive Burrs drums come pounding in to restart the song.  Very cool.  “Another Life” is another fast punky song, and while I like it, it is probably one of the weaker songs on the album.  But that’s okay because it is followed by one of Maidens greatest instrumentals–“Genghis Khan” which has beautiful symphonic soaring solos over a cool propulsive beat.

“Innocent Exile” opens with another great noisy slappy bass riff that only Harris was doing at the time.  “Killers” is a classic track: fast and yet complex, with a very cool riff.   “Twilight Zone” sees Di’Anno reaching for higher more operatic notes.  He makes it, but you can just tell that the band needs more from their vocalist.  “Prodigal Son” opens with a pretty acoustic guitar intro.  I used to like this song quite a bit (whatever Lamia is), but I can see that it’s actually quite long and meandering (maybe this one is more like “War Pigs”).  It’s pretty but could probably be a bit shorter.  “Purgatory” sounds like track off the first album–fast raw and punky with screaming riffs.  “Drifter” ends the disc with a cool bass line and some more thrashing.  It’s a solid ending for an album that overall works pretty well, but which kind of shows that the band had to either do something big on the next album or get stuck in a rut.

[READ: June 1, 2013] McSweeney’s #43

And with this issue I am almost all caught up with my McSweeney’s.  More impressively, I read this one only a few days after receiving it!

This issues comes with two small books.  And each book has a very cool fold-out/die cut cover (which is rather hard to close and which I was sure would get caught and therefore ripped on something but which hasn’t yet).  The first is a standard collection of letters and stories and the second is a collection of fiction from South Sudan.  Jointly they are a great collection of fiction and nonfiction, another solid effort from McSweeney’s.

Letters (more…)

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