Culling, Continued

Sure, it's a conveniently-sized, oh-so-tidy spot for me to store all my music, from the quirky to the glorious to the gloriously quirky. Sure, I've listened to everything on it at least once. But as the song count on my iPod approaches the 5,000 mark, I have to wonder if I'm not the musical embodiment of The Rich Fool.

It looks like Terry Teachout is in a frame of mind somewhat similar to my own.

Tom Carson on Lee Marvin

Lee Marvin is alarmingly at home in The Dirty Dozen. He almost makes its cynical point of view look respectable, not by finding it profound but simply by enjoying himself in a way that amounts to an endorsement. Facing a crop of newbies all eager to go over big — John Cassavetes and Donald Sutherland, for two — he looks as amused by the idea that they can compete with his serene underplaying as an elephant surrounded by chimps. They're all playing murderers and head cases, but to him it's a given that he's more formidably frightening, because he doesn't need to be psychotic to act this way — just to trust his superior acquaintance with how the world works. He sells the movie by finding nothing in it surprising.

"The Big One" by Tom Carson, GQ, April 2005. With fab illo by Tavis Coburn.

Mood, Moody, And Reader Response

As our family prepared for a week of vacation in Maine, I deliberated over which novel to bring along. I had hoped to luck into used copies from Maine's literary habitués (particularly Richard Russo and Stephen King) but, alas, geography-specific fiction was not in my cards. Since the plan was to drive through northern New York, which I considered John Gardner Country (even if we would be missing Batavia by a wide sweep), I meditated on his titles for a few minutes before deciding against it. Eventually I settled on my old, previously attempted copy of Rick Moody's The Diviners.

I haven't a clue what made me think this go-round would be any more successful than my previous attempts. Twice before I had returned the book to its spot on the shelf, always for the usual reason: what Moody had hoped would be challenging, I read as self-indulgent and distracting. But then we all know story-tellers who beguile their listeners with those very traits — the uncle who laughs hardest at his own joke — so maybe now was the moment for me to share in the laughter.

Turns out it was. I thought the book was a hoot. I was in a satisfied state of mind when I finished, which stayed with me for the next few weeks.

Given my yin-yang experience of the novel, I doubt I could motivate others to read it. The least persuasive aspect of the novel is its central premise: a malleable story about generations of water-dowsers that inspires everyone who hears about it to put their previous lives on hold so they can to get it into production. So much ink and air was expelled to give this concept life, but since none of it struck me as either funny or moving, it instead came off as lame. Still, the characters that got whipped into a froth over it were lovable mutts. I was glad I'd kept the book around.

There are a few dozen other titles with similar potential, parked on dusty bookshelves in different corners of the house. I live in the hope I'll eventually experience a similar awakening unique to each. Odds are they already occupy space in Richard Brautigan's Bookstore (link).

Getting back to Stephen King for a moment (who, I suspect, had some admiration for Brautigan): Sam Sacks really takes the boots to King, not just for the prose, but for the pose. I don't have a dog in this fight (so far as I know) — I loved this book when I was a kid, and thought these two provided worthy moments for kids and adults — but I have been struck by King's surliness toward critics and prize awarders, and even his own publishers and readers. Dude: you're richer than God, everyone who reads English has read at least one of your books, you have a wife who loves you and children who show up at Thanksgiving — content yourself, o mortal!

Magazines And What's Worth Keeping

The basement purge began in earnest this August. And one of my foremost realizations while purging was, there are very very few magazines worth holding on to past the end of the month.

Not that I've had an easy time throwing them away. I've been slowly culling through the bales of print in the basement, and while 99% of what I'm looking at gets a quick flick into the Blue Box, there is still the occasional issue that returns to the (now roomier) shelf downstairs. Then there are others joining a growing pile next to the door, because they have one or two articles that still engage, or maybe even just a quote or two.

I've decided that if it's just a quote I'm keen on, I should post it up here and give the bundle of paper the old heave-ho. If the article is on-line I will link to it; otherwise, the enjoyable quote just exists as it is, in all its virtual, context-free glory. For the first example, scroll down.

Wayne Coyne Quote

A lot of people ask me what song I wish I had written. C'mon, that's easy — “Happy Birthday.” That's a useful little song, isn't it? You start singing “Happy Birthday” and things start happening. People start smiling, they start singing along. Well, that's what rock 'n' roll is, if it's done right. It's useful. You do it right, and people generally have a pretty good time. They go to the concert, they talk to their friends, they drink beer, and hopefully they go home and have sex. That's what rock 'n' roll is about; that's what it's always been about — that's the deal. But a guy like Beck, he doesn't know that because, you know, he's Beck. He thinks it's about him. He thinks that when he's walking down the hallway before the show, the people out there are thinking about him walking down the hallway, because he's the artist. And I'm like, “Beck, I hate to break this to you, but for most of those people, you're the entertainment. They're not thinking of you. They're thinking of whether they're going to have sex tonight. So entertain them and help them have sex.” And so, at the beginning of this tour, Beck wanted the shows to be very serious. He's a serious artist, he's come out with a serious album, he wants to do a serious show. And I'm like, “Beck, what are you, Elvis Costello? People like Elvis, but secretly they think he's boring. You're Beck. You do that funny little hipster dance. People love the hipster dance. If you don't do the hipster dance, people are going to be disappointed. So do the hipster dance.” And Beck's like, “But I want these shows to be serious.” And I'm like, “Beck, I go out there and pour fake blood all over myself while singing 'Happy Birthday.' The least you can do is dance.”

Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, from Have You Met The Lips? by Tom Junod, Esquire Magazine, March 2003.

Still On The "Whither Criticism?" Front:

Over at First Things R.R. Reno wonders if a passion for theory doesn't run the risk of becoming idolatry. Hm — “Whisky Prajer: Man of Letters.” Kinda has a ring to it, I think!

Soundtrack For The Slough

Neither of my trusty comfort food authors — George Pelecanos or James Lee Burke — seem to be reaching me this time around. There’s no point in me getting technical about the distance, since they’re doing pretty much what I’ve always paid them to do. The problem lies with me: I’m momentarily mired in a wee slough of despond, in which the usual charmers have lost their powers to distract. There are a number of reasons for this. I left my job in June. It was, and remains, the right thing for me to do, and it freed me up wonderfully for the summer. But I haven’t yet found another to replace it, and I miss the contact with other people, especially now that the girls are back in school.

Also, this month marks the second anniversary of my father-in-law’s death, and I think my wife and I miss him more this year than we did last. So it goes. Although there is a certain amount of activity a person should engage in to prevent grief from slipping into self-indulgence, the absence must be acknowledged. Attention must be paid.

Even in this condition, however, it surprises me that Mordecai Richler’s social dyspepsia fails to move me. In preparation for Montreal I pulled Barney’s Version off the shelf, figuring I’d best give it one last read before Paul Giamatti’s mug permanently burned itself into my brain as the lovably difficult (to say the least) Barney Panofsky. I have to say, 45 is a much better age to read this book than 32 was. Even so, I’m taken aback to realize that nearly all the cultural/historical points of reference that Richler/Panofsky comment on with such acidity have pretty much passed their “best before” date. Richler seems to have sensed this eventuality, and wields these details with a canny awareness of their, and his narrator’s — and his own — mortality. Still, it makes my bittersweet read of the book more bitter than sweet. I can’t imagine a 25-year-old Canadian reader connecting with this book at all, never mind at the pleasantly superficial level I seemed to 13 years ago.

Thankfully, music still hath charms. In a last-minute scramble to use up my monthly downloads at eMusic, I tripped across Signify by Porcupine Tree — and fell in love. PT’s rep seems to be “new prog.” I haven’t heard enough of what they’re up to lately to comment, but this artifact from 1996 is moody and ethereal (“atmospheric” to use the parlance), occasionally lyrical in a Flaming Lips sort of way. Sampling is judiciously resorted to: one or two evangelists are recruited for sound-bites that could, but needn’t, be heard ironically (although if one of these evangelists is, as I suspect, Benny Hinn, irony is better than he deserves). They struck me as a Life After God echo, which has a winning sincerity of sentiment for me. Signify plays like the last soundtrack to be broadcast before the Blade Runner world of indentured serfs and privileged enforcers finally took over.

My most recent aural fixation is with True Love Cast Out All Evil by Roky Erickson, former front-man for the 13th Floor Elevators. When it was first released in April I took only vague note of it. Erickson’s reputation to date had been as one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most spectacular acid casualties, a la Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson — here’s the wiki. True Love Cast Out All Evil was hailed as a recovery/comeback for Erickson, a designation that, for me, has all the appeal of reheated left-overs.

On one of my recent forays as Taxi-Driver To The Adolescents, I retrieved a copy of Mojo collecting dust on our coffee-table. I’d bought it some months earlier, but hadn’t yet leafed through it. I perused while waiting for the event to conclude, and found it to be exactly the sort of issue Mojo is occasionally brilliant at. Tom Waits “guest edits”, so that flavors much of what’s present. He interviews Hank III; Joe Henry interviews Harry Belafonte. And Bill Holdship gives a rave review for True Love Cast Out All Evil.

Until I read Holdship, I hadn’t realized just how deep an abyss Erickson has emerged from. And while True Love is all about the gift of recovery, it has a sound that echoes back into that void. Okkervil River, who I never had much of an ear for, prove themselves to be Erickson’s ideal collaborators, conjuring a background that drifts from dreamy to jarring to triumphant. The album is very much a gospel tent extravaganza, with a bloody-heart-on-the-shirtsleeves sincerity that will either convert the listener or send him back out to the cold back alleys of Hell. Something like this will never appeal to everyone, but it certainly feels like it has found me, and not the reverse.