Book No. 16: Herman Melville - Bartleby The Scrivener

Is it cheating that I'm including a novella? Fuck it, I make my own rules, man!

Bartleby is a wonderful story, natch, and this is maybe the 30th time I've read it. I just spent too much money on the attractive Art Of The Novella printing. They have a great idea - printing great novellas in pleasant colors adorned only with the declarative font you can see at left. However, I paid almost $10 for mine, and the thing about novellas is that you can typically read them in about an hour, tops. So... worth it? Maybe and maybe not.

Anyway, if you've never read it, the narrator is a bureaucrat who is telling the story from years before of a young scrivener (sort of like an attorney and a copyist) who slowly retreats from his duties and eventually all trappings of life itself with the statement "I would prefer not to." Rather delightful for anyone who has glanced about their life and realized that the game is rigged and that the only way not to lose is not to play. That's a concept easier to imagine, of course, than it is to implement, as refuseniks will often end up with poor Bartleby's fate. The rest of us are on a pay-to-play plan.

Book No. 15: Carl Wilson - Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love

Carl Wilson's 33 1/3 book is unusual in many senses. First, Wilson is not enamored of Celine Dion's album, which is very much unlike the relationship most of the 33 1/3 authors have for their subjects. Second, Wilson is primarily interested in fan reactions: why do so many people love Celine Dion's music while so many critics hate it? Third, Wilson's methodology is aesthetic. He is trying to explain his own reactions to Dion's book through the signifiers it carries for him.

It's not just unusual but astonishing, too. Wilson rises to the occasional admirably, breaking out why Western listeners have their aesthetic reactions, delving into a brief history of aesthetics, constantly challenging not just himself, but his readers, too. As a work of music criticism, it's more like Harry Frankfurt's work of popular philosophy On Bullshit than anything else. I loved it and recommend it to anyone interested in pop culture, not just the music and lit geeks who usually enjoy 33 1/3 books.

Book No. 13: Amanda Petrusich - Nick Drake's Pink Moon

Some of the commenters on Amazon's page have been unkind to this book because Petrusich spends a good chunk of space talking about the VW commercial that spurred Nick Drake's current popularity. I think that's a stupid attitude.

I hadn't been a Nick Drake fan for long when I heard that commercial. Maybe a year, but less, I think. I was in a different room while my wife was watching TV. I heard the opening strains of the song "Pink Moon," and yelled to my wife, "You're playing Nick Drake?" She sounded surprised herself, and said no, it was on a commercial.

I felt a little put-out at first. Drake seemed like such a private pleasure that I felt conflicted about sharing his music with the world via a commercial. But I liked the commercial. I made peace with it.

Drake's story is pretty cut-and-dried at this point. Too young and sensitive for this world. Petrusich found a way to tell it again by gathering stories from Drake's sister and Joe Boyd, who knew him best. She asked a number of fans to submit a few paragraphs about their relationship to Drake's music. And she talked about the commercial, how it opened him up to a brand new audience. Good stuff.

On a personal note, I want to mention that the musicians on Drake's first record are many of the same ones from the album I wrote about, Shoot Out The Lights. Richard Thompson on guitar, Dave Pegg on bass, and David Mattacks on drums. Not always, but sometimes. I also wrote a short section that dealt with September 11, 2001, which Petrusich talks about as a time that she turned to Pink Moon for comfort. And yet our books are quite different. Cool, huh?

Book No. 12: Gilbert Hernandez - Chance In Hell

Reviewing comic books now, apparently. I loved Gilbert Hernandez's dreamy Sloth, another non-Love & Rockets book from last year, and so looked forward to this one quite a bit. But I didn't much care for it. It was about an abandoned child in an uncaring country who grows up to a more stable life, even as she fears being pulled under by her own demons. Sounds promising, yes, especially in the hands of the master who gave us the rich Palomar stories and Love & Rockets X. And yet I never found much to connect to in the story. The main character is so alienating and her circumstances so horrifying that I never wanted to bridge my distance from her. Maybe she had only one chance in hell, as suggested by the title, or maybe, on the other hand, she has no chance at all in life. I'm not sure. And I don't really want to figure it out. Great art, great eye. But cold, cold, cold.

Book No. 11: Mike McGonigal - My Bloody Valentine's Loveless

McGonigal's take on the 33 1/3 form is semi-journalistic, although McGonigal inserts himself in the role of enthusiastic guide. I love this album, but it's by design a mystery of sorts. It's a loud, distorted rock album that is almost ethereal. There's few lyrics on it that seem to make sense, but the songs seem perfect as they are. But I'm afraid I'm running out of new ways to say things about 33 1/3 books. The facts in the book are fascinating, the interviews enlightening, and McGonigal's personal touches are loads of fun. If you're a MBV fan, you should read it. If you're not, you probably won't dig it. If you've never heard MBV, go get the album and the book at the same time and read it while you listen.

Book No. 10: Allyson Beatrice - Will The Vampire People Please Leave The Lobby?

This is the second catch-up book post. Beatrice is someone I virtually know via one of the online communities she mentions here.

This is a breezy book about fandom in the early 21st century. Beatrice recounts how she left her unsatisfying corporate job and moved across the country to look for happiness in LA. She met a few people through the Buffy The Vampire Slayer fansite The Bronze. Then she becomes involved with fan activism and eventually forms lasting friendships with other posters and some of the show's (and other shows that emerged from it) writers.

Beatrice is an entertaining writer, not just funny and insightful but willing to lay her heart bare in pursuit of the truth. Her kindness shines through the pages, and she has enough ironic distance from herself to understand when she's being - as she puts it - a jerk, although I don't know that anyone who knows her online persona would describe her that way. Anyway, as a diehard nerd who loved the mix of whimsy and brutality that made shows like Buffy and Angel and Firefly and Wonderfalls and (now) Pushing Daisies - excuse me, that mix that made these shows so special, I certainly enjoyed her adventures and recommend them to others like me.

Book No. 9: Brad Vice - The Bear Bryant Funeral Train

I read this a while back, actually. I meant to blog about it, and then I was concerned that I wasn't doing it justice, and then I forgot to finish blogging about it. I have another book that I read around the same time where the same thing happened. Both were written by people I know.

This one is the more notorious of the two. Back in late 2005, a few voices threw accusation of plagiarism at the original edition of this book. I posted about it at the time, first about UGA's decision to pulp the book and then about the absolutely ridiculous NY Press hatchet-job written by the guy who'd elsewhere called for another Sherman to metaphorically burn down the literary South. Shame on him. I hope anyone out there who called for Brad's head on a spike without reading the book in question has come to his or her senses. If not, shame on you, too.

This version of the book is a little different from the UGA publication that was unceremoniously pulped. The stories are in a different order and the epigraphs from his original text have been restored. So, the burning question: is it any good?

That it is. Vice's stories are uniformly smart, well-observed, and deeply touching. In fact, I liked the most controversial story, "Tuscaloosa Knights," least of all, although I can say that I liked it a great deal. Some of the stories in part one ("Stalin" and Other Children's Stories) were working through Vice's relationship with his father, and the protagonists of those stories share a father who is both a farmer and a teacher, somewhere between hard-bitten realist and dreamy intellectual. In "Artifacts," a woman and her increasingly-absent husband quietly grieve over the loss of their young son until things come to a surprising head. I found the culmination of this story very silly on the face of it, but it managed to break my heart completely at the same time. "Chickensnake" is likewise haunted by a lost child - the older brother of the protagonist this time - as it quietly reveals how the violence of farm life is a reflection of life's constant close proximity to pain and death.

Part two of the book (The Bear Bryant Funeral Train) opens with "Tuscaloosa Knights," the story that lead Vice's literary witch-trial. In this one, a neglected young wife in 1920s Tuscaloosa watches a Klan rally with her only friend in town. Some of her observations are verbatim from Carl Carmer's nonfiction account of life in 1920s Tuscaloosa, Stars Fell On Alabama, in the section titled "Tuscaloosa Nights." It's a good story, but I like the others in this section better. "Report From Junction" explores the farm/city dichotomy with the backdrop of Bryant's tenure as head coach of Texas A&M. "Demopolis" yanks happiness out from under the feet of its protagonist suddenly and violently, and its description of Tuscaloosa in the 1990s is perfect. "Mule" is so utterly beautiful that I don't want to spoil a word of it here. The final story, "The Bear Bryant Funeral Train" is a little postmodern exercise in fakery as the protagonist creates a fake document of a real event, heightening it into the realms of myth. It's the perfect explanation for Vice's use of reality and unreality to create greater truth. That's what fiction writers do.

Book No. 8: John Dougan - The Who Sell Out (33 1/3)

Dougan's 33 1/3 contribution focuses on the cultural context surrounding The Who's Pop Art masterpiece. It's on the MOJO-journalism side of the 33 1/3 style guide, but well worth reading. Especially if, like me, you consider The Who Sell Out the apex of their career and one of the best albums of all time.

Book No. 7: Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

This is a hard novel to describe. I wasn't hooked until about the halfway point, but then I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen. I didn't much care for the main characters until that point, but I became intoxicated by their struggles to define themselves and their place in the pointless war around them. Now that it's all over, I realize that it was an attempt to recast Vietnam and the horror of all that senseless struggle in semi-mystical terms, as a spiritual wound that cannot heal unless souls die and gods are destroyed. But that's glib and reductive, and Tree Of Smoke is neither. I think.

The cast of characters is large, but after awhile, I wished it were larger. There's Skip Sands, a young and idealistic CIA spook in 1965. There's his uncle The Colonel, a near-mythic Kurtzian figure so known despite being unaffiliated with the military since before WWII. There's his sometimes-love object Kathy, a widowed missionary struggling with lack of faith while bringing medicine to Vietnamese peasants. There's a storyline following Bill and James Houston, who are scarred by military bureaucracy and the horrible violence of war (respectively) and then wind up in Phoenix, AZ with no more ability to deal with real life than Stone Age tribemen. There's the Colonel's muscle, Jimmy Storm, who acts as Skip's evil twin for awhile, then becomes obsessed towards the end with the idea that he's been lied to. There's the Vietnamese characters Hao and Trung Than, who grew up together in an orphanage and wind up on opposite sides of the conflict.

My fundamental problem with the book is that I never really understand these men's motives. No, that's not right: I get their motives, but I don't understand their arcs. I get why they are doing the things they are doing up to a point (everything becomes inexplicable once the story jumps into the 80s). Johnson's aiming for some sort of spiritual transcendence with these storylines, but the meaning is ultimately obscure. By this, I mean that everything seems to go nowhere. The Houston brothers' story comes to nothing I can make out. Both Skip and the colonel betray their own idealism. There's moments of beautiful writing and moments where the prose sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. There's scenes that will stick with me, especially Storm's final scene, which seems to cap the point of everything without any resolution. Maybe the point is that resolution is impossible without death, but that certainly doesn't seem like a truth where the reveal is worth the ride.

Do I recommend it? Yes. This is the kind of problem book that I would wish on my friends, mainly because I'm curious about their takes on it. A book containing such baffling multitudes invites conversation. I think there's major parts of the book that are worthwhile, ringing with much more truth than the resolution. But maybe I'm a cynic.

FACT: I'm not going to read 50 books this year.

FACT: I am going to read some books this year.

RESOLVED: I will abandon the 50 books project, but will continue to review books here.

RESOLVED: Since I've been reading a lot of 33 1/3 books, I will talk about their pros and cons on the Shoot Out The Lights blog, where 33 1/3 books are of interest.

UNDER CONSIDERATION: Moving the music library posts to their own blog. Not quite sure whether it will be worth it, although the project has been fun so far (and needs updating).

Book 6/50: Swordfishtrombones by David Smay


David Smay's a friend of mine. Let's get that out of the way. I like the guy a lot, and he (and 33 1/3 author Kim Cooper) gave me a break when they accepted my contributions to Lost In The Grooves, their encyclopedia of musical also-rans.

So I'm relieved that I can write that Swordfishtrombones is incredibly well-written and one of the most entertaining 33 1/3 books I've read. Smay wrestles with the inscrutable persona of Tom Waits, which on this album was in flux between the Beat crooner of the 70s and the rickety bone sharpener of the 80s and later, and like Jacob and his angel, Smay's victory is both unlikely and entertaining (Jacob, as you may remember, touched the angel in the hollow of his thigh, thus winning the fight with his bad touch). My favorite things about the book are the transformations of the lines that seem like tossed-off jokes at the beginning of the book (such as how Tom Waits wears plows for feet). Smay works his literary magic and by the end of the book, Smay's flights of fiction and fancy have incorporated this jokes in a way that replaces their funny incongruity with touching resonance. Along the way, Smay explains just why the persona transition was important and how it led to such later works of utter brilliance as Rain Dogs and Bone Machine and Mule Variations. I don't want to ruin it for you, but it's a hell of a lot of fun for Waits fans and fans of good prose alike.

Book 5/50: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Eh, I was close to the end, so I figured I'd finish the series off sooner rather than later. Not too much to say about this one. I liked how a goodly chunk of the book had almost no forward propulsion in the plot because the characters were trapped in the frustrating boredom of hiding out for their lives. I liked the central choice Harry was facing, although I wish Rowling had found a way to help him (and the readers, natch) understand without a neverending trip to mystical Exposition Land with Dumbledore, who apparently became an Exposition Fairy in the afterlife. I had to go back and re-read the final pages again because it was hard to figure out what exactly had happened when I finished. And now I've forgotten again.

Anyway, it will be fun to see what my kids think about all this when they get old enough to read the stories.

Book 4/50: Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns

I've been reading a lot of 33 1/3 books recently. Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation is one of my favorite albums, going back to my teenage years. This book combines interviews with members of SY with a read on the lyrics and music. As a guitarist, I sort of wish Stearns had gone further by describing the wacky tunings and crazy guitar punishment Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo dish out. I liked how he tied SY back to the No Wave "movement" of the late 70s and then to Rhys Chatham's and Glenn Branca's subsequent noise-minimalism compositions. Ultimately, though, I love Daydream Nation for its mystery and unknowable nature, and I don't think that Stearns - or anyone, really - could tease out all the elements of strangeness on the album. Good effort, though, definitely, and a fun read for Sonic Youth fans. And it inspired me to listen to Daydream Nation quite a lot over the last few weeks, so yay for that.

Book 3/50: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling


Yes, it's been out for a while and yes, it's a book for children. I read the first four books in the series a number of years ago and figured I was done with it then. But my brother has prevailed on me to finish the series, saying that it gets better and even addresses the exceptionalist way that Harry Potter is wonderful at everything and everyone good loves him and all that. I don't mind those things for the story - after all, the books are meant for children, and children sometimes need a less complicated main character to identify with - but it was getting tedious for me. So, long story long, I figured I'd read the final three books.

And that's all justification for reading books that are, after all, a pop culture phenomenon, so here's the skinny. I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix back in October or November of last year, and my brother was right: the books were a bit more nuanced and interesting. I bought this one recently and read it in about two days (I mean, it's the size of a phone book, yes, but the font is huge and the story is all plot, which is easier to read than good writing, y'know). Other reviewers have exhausted everything there is to say about the book, so all I'm going to add is that it's ok. I'm glad I'm reading it, but it's basically junk food. I like Oreos, too, but I'm not going to praise them for their complexity or rewarding experience.

Book 2/50: The Amalgamation Polka by Stephen Wright

I should say more about this, but I've been sitting on this review for over a week. The novel is about the U.S.'s attempt to heal over the scar of slavery before and during the Civil War, and it combines some harrowing realistic segments (such as the battle sequence, Antietam, I think) with highly allegorical characters and situations. There's a few spoilers below, but nothing that should dampen your enjoyment of this novel.

The main character is Liberty Fish, the son of New York-based abolitionists, although his mother grew up on a slave-owning plantation in South Carolina. When she left, she never saw her parents or siblings again, but their hold on her (often amplified by their letters) hurts her terribly. Liberty heads off to war when it breaks out, but eventually deserts from Sherman's March to go meet his maternal grandparents, only partially prepared but determined to witness the Boschian horrors of the plantation.

Wright's eye for historical detail is thrilling. For instance, the segment of the book in which a young Liberty and his father travel by boat upriver along the Erie Canal (or is it the Niagara River?) reminds me of both Melville's The Confidence Man and Vigo's excellent movie L'Atalante, but it is also very different and true to the central conflict of his story. I think those expecting pure realism will be lost, but readers who enjoy woozy surrealism (it's not for nothing that Pynchon himself has a blurb on the cover) would very much enjoy this novel.

I'm-a gonna read 50 books in 2008! Maybe!

Here's book No. 1/50: Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men

I love Cormac McCarthy, as a general rule. I think Blood Meridian, Suttree, and The Road are among the finest novels of the last 40 years. But I'd heard other McCarthy lovers express indifference for much of his post-Blood Meridian work, and a reading of All The Pretty Horses a few years back seemed to confirm that take on the man's oeuvre. I thought as much as I loved his major works, maybe his minor ones weren't for me.

Then I saw the Coen Brothers' big screen adaptation of No Country For Old Men a couple of weeks back, and I figured that I should give the book a try. The movie spoke to me. I thought the book would, too.

And it does, but it's not the same. All my mental images have been pre-determined by the movie. Even where the book and movie diverge (which isn't often), I have a hard time picturing the scene without a stylistic similarity to the Coen Brothers' movie.

Anyway, yes, the book is pulpier and thinner than McCarthy's major works. The themes of inevitability and the rotten heart of human existence are on better display in other McCarthy books. Moss and Sheriff Bell could be Larry Brown creations. They are suitably rough and driven by internal monologues that aren't necessarily shared with the world (or readers, in Moss's case), but they lack the mythic otherness of McCarthy's best characters, although Chigurh certainly makes up for that.

It's a quick read, though. Because I saw the movie first - and because I think the movie is the superior work in this case - I'll never think of it on its own. I'm pretty sure it will always be a companion to the movie in my head.