books, books, books

[Jack of All Parades]

On with the work of discovery[as if I were Lewis&Clark or Mason&Dixon for that matter] but supported this time with a sound dictionary-over the past few months have been conducting my own self-tutorial on Shakespeare[an audited course with my own sylabus taking advantage over the past two weeks of a sabbatical from work:

"Shakespeare and Modern Culture" by Marjorie Garber-a wonderful potpurri of contempory thinking about the man-Ms. Garber is never dull and she fills this book with bright, cogent and always spot on examples of how 'Shakespeare makes modern culture;modern culture makes Shakespeare'[her chiasmus]-for the print challenged it is equally filled with perceptive cartoons and photos.

"Shakespeare After All" by the same Ms. Garber-a brilliant overview essay of his entire career encapsulating all previous scholarship and then individual synopsis of the known plays[like Mark Van Doren's Shakespeare but clearly designed to replace it]-each individual essay makes one want to go back to the source text.

"Shakespeare's Ghost Writers:Literature as Uncanny Causality" by the aforementioned Ms. Garber-given the coming season an apropos text-spirits and spooks fill the plays and perhaps the biggest bogeyman is the notion that a "ghostwriter" actually did the work-she turns this on its head and vigorously argues that Shakespeare is his own ghostwriter and is constantly playing with his audience's perceptions relating to the authorial text.

"Berryman's Shakespeare" by the poet John Berryman- in particular his perceptive essay "Shakespeare at Thirty" in which he imagines Shakespeare waking on his thirtieth birthday to do a career assessment and the implications it has for his great work following 1594 and his intelligent discussion of the sonnets.

"Shakespeare's Language" by Frank Kermode- a great scholar's analysis of the Bard's powerful usage of words particularly after 1600 and the impact that dynamic language had on the subsequent plays.

"Will Of the World" by Stephen Greenblatt- the best contemporary biographical study I have read-his analysis of the creation of this man, Shakespeare, is dead-on-because of this book I feel I have a deeper understanding of what went into making "Shakespeare".

"The Shakespeare Wars" by Ron Rosenbaum-[a big thank you to ALEXV to turning me onto this book in a previous post]probably the best, pure read of all these books- this man has managed to live, breathe, eat and think Shakespeare in his daily life-he has opened my eyes to how the bard populates mine and his everyday world-kudos for taking on Harold Bloom and all the other cultural behemaths associated with the man-he has managed to reinvent Shakespeare for me as a 21st century person with the literary baggage of some 400 plus years attached to him stripped away.

All the books are eminently worth reading- but if, gun to head, had to pick one- it would be the Rosenbaum with a close second given to Garber for her "Shakespeare and Modern Culture".

[Jack of All Parades]

A Pynchon aside as provided by the Rosenbaum Shakespeare book-in a chapter in the book on the "Funeral Elegy" controversy from the '90s- in an epilogue he makes mention of attributed letters relating to this controversy being composed by a "Wanda Tinasky" and later attributed to Thomas Pynchon and still later found to be totally faked by another person-could not be more Pynchonian.

[johnfoyle]

My book group loved William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Once the multiple narrative, non-linear, stream of conciousness format was accepted it was a book to be lost in, wallowing in the grotesqueness and teeming imagery. Words like 'mamalian ludicrosity' etc. In a curious case of cultural osmosis I finished reading it while listening to Elvis in concert in Melbourne. 'Bedlam' featured .Another piece of sprawling verbiage, recorded (written?) in Oxford, Miss - where Faulkner lived and worked. True!

[Jack of All Parades]

John, I have fond memories of reading the book, though it was many years ago. What a surreal trip to bury a loved one. Seem to remember one chapter consisting totally of a child's exclamation that his mother was a fish. Also did'nt the dead mother speak as a character? Remember thinking that body must have been ripe in the pine box in the back of the wagon as the family moved through that hot, humid Mississippi landscape.

[Jack of All Parades]

A bit ago it was suggested that I might enjoy listening to a reading of the poem, "The Whitsun Weddings" by the author, Philip Larkin. I have managed to do this and it is has been revelatory. Larkin's vocal stresses have reopened the poem for me. I have taken comparable rail trips in England but this particular one is far more symbolic. It is a journey that takes its author, and his fellow countrymen, from a time of bucolic freshness to a journey's end which is punctuated by "an arrow-shower" which is "becoming rain" as the "brakes take hold". In the matter of an afternoon, just approaching Whitsun Day, the author is confronted with the sea change that has enveloped England as it has emerged from the Depression and the calamity of the Second World War and the dissolution of its empire. What was once a country at its zenith, just as the sun in the opening stanzas is on high , heating the carriages and casting short-shadows on the cattle grazing, paralleled by a water lazily drifting across the horizon, is now a country rapidly approaching its nadir. The images of decay abound with "floatings of industrial froth", 'the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth", and the "acres of dismantled cars" which litter the countryside.

The multiple weddings that he observes as he passes through subsequent towns only serve to mirror this ebbing of time and prominence "as if[the participants stand]out on the end of an event waving goodbye to something that survived it.". The participants are now viewed by the observer as slightly decayed or less in their prime as evidenced by the "broad belts" under their bellys, the "seamy foreheads", mothers "fat", the "nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes" that now have replaced what once was original, fresh and stylish in the country. As the train approaches London, the observer is forced to view the city as a place where its "postal districts[are]packed like squares of wheat[but not the abundant fields of a former heyday but "packed", homogenized.

This poem is a fitting end to the line started by Blake and Wordsworth as they bemoaned the loss of traditional English feel for the land and the encroachment of the Industrial Age. It is one of the saddest poetic journeys I have taken. This poem has also helped to put another one, " I Remember, I Remember", by Larkin, in bold relief as it is yet another rail journey, in this case back into the past and the stark reality that all is not as was supposed. Its bitter, sad and wiser final acknowledgement that "Nothing, like something, happens anywhere." echoes the feel I recently found in a song by Prefab Sprout, "I Remember That".

[Otis Westinghouse]

Love that song. Glad you found things to enjoy in his reading, and you will no doubt only ever hear that distinctive voice when re-reading It's a likeable voice, congenial, almost benign. It's such a vivid poem, and you cite some of the most memorable lines. I well recall seeing that industrial froth in English rivers from train windows. I don't think it exists any more. And I've commented before on the sensory impact of the carriage description. I almost feel I'm inside it. Other lines to love: 'all sense of being in a hurry gone' - incredibly simple, but capturing exactly the rush to get on the train followed by the unchangeable pace of it once on; and perhaps best of all, after the cultural specifics of the Odeon, the cooling towers and the running up to bowl, 'none/
Thought of the others they would never meet/Or how their lives would all contain this hour.' The hour connects the random facts of the weddings, and the poem links them all forever. Observation becomes connection. It's very moving, itmakes you wonder if any of the people involved ever became aware of the poem.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive ... ?id=178047

Elsewhere:

- As I Lay Dying is yet another title on the Otis list of books I've always wanted to read and never got round to.

- Wanda Tinasky was new to me, but the name could easily be Pynchon and the whole story is undeniably Pynchonian, as you observe.

- I actually finished The Bookseller of Kabul today. It's a rare occurrence, me finishing a book. I enjoyed it, eye-opening about life inside one family's home in Kabul, bringing home the human impact of the horrendous events of Afghanistan's recent history.

- That delicious and all too infrequent feeling of 'What to read next?' Resisted the temptation to go to Inherent Vice, that can be for Christmas, maybe, and instead went for a book my wife and father both loved: 'The Book Thief by Australian Markus Zusak (I hadn't realized he was Australian). Other books may have dead narrators, but this one is actually narrated by death, a brilliant conceit. So far so good.

[Jack of All Parades]

The Book Thief sounds intriguing-death as a narrator- will look for it. When John Foyle recently posted about his enjoyment of a reading of As I Lay Dying it stimulated me to want to revisit a favorite novel regarding a family- in this case Larry Woiwode's Beyond the Bedroom Wall -in my fourth time through I was no less impressed by the sheer quality of this story-both in its presentation and in its sentiment- it too is told with a non-linear narrative and from the perspective of multiple characters-it is like looking at a scrambled family album with many sets of eyes-it also involves the death of a parent-the story of the Neumillers of North Dakota and Illinois is told in varying structures- diary entrys, through a child's drawn pictures, third party observations, etc.- it is my favorite American novel regarding the family from the last 30 years going all the way back to 1975 when it was published and the preceeding years when the Neumiller stories would show up in issues of The New Yorker - you really care about this family.

[Otis Westinghouse]

I haven't had time to get really stuck in (why is it the only time I find/make to read is when my eyes are closing?), but it's rather wonderful. Will report back later.

[so lacklustre]

I have just started the new John Irving - Last Night in Twisted River. It will take me a while to finish as reading time is limited these days.

[mood swung]

wow, did not know he even had a new one out!

I've been staying up late and getting up early trying to finish Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, which I described to Goody2 as not being Must Read, but it has turned out to be.

[Otis Westinghouse]

One of my wife's favourite books. She's read it twice. Loves the descriptions, sense of place, etc. I've never read it, to her immense disappointment. ALl in good time...

[pophead2k]

I have just started the new John Irving - Last Night in Twisted River. It will take me a while to finish as reading time is limited these days.

Anxious to know what you think. I'm a pretty big fan, but have been pretty let down as of late, especially the last one.

[Jack of All Parades]

I have been fighting some wanderlust of late and when I do that I return to a book that has been a balm to me for many years, On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. Hard to believe it is over fifty years old. I just completed my upteenth reading of this book and it has done its job. When ever I get the urge to just light out, to beat it for the hills and the far horizon, this book helps to restore me to some semblance of sanity. The character of Sal Paradise has taught me about responsibility to friends and family and he always manages to ground me when my feet start itching for the next town over. This reading has brought home a new lesson to me, in light of the world financial meltdown, that I need not feel bad about rejecting the material success so many have sought with their work lives, that I should be comfortable in my own skin. It is a valuable lesson and a very affirming one for me.

This book was a primer for me, and still is, on Jazz and how to listen and absorb it. I am always awed by the way Kerouac's prose mimics the way a good jazz musician works a riff, turning it inside out and deconstructing it before restoring the main melody back to you, rejuvinated and reinvigorated. As he has Sal at one point say "the alto player fills empty space with the substance of our lives". Not a bad way to listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJdxJ5llh5A

As an aside, my particular affinity for this book has been fueled by a closer association, that being the fact that my father-in-law and his best friend, Zoot Sims, were Kerouac's favorite tenor players. The attached clip features Kerouac reciting some of his poetry while they provide a musical interpretation to the words. Kerouac had managed to get the funding to hire his two favorite musicians to record with him and they dutifully showed up at the recording date and played in the background for him, smoking, drinking and having a good time. Unfortunately, they looked upon it as a paying professional gig and when their alloted time was up packed up their horns, pocketed their pay, and split. The story goes that they left Kerouac desolate and crying on the studio floor upset that his two favorite musicians had split and didn't want to hang with him and play and shoot the breeze. As my father-in-law said, it was just another paying gig to them. I have always been saddened by that image of Kerouac distraught on the floor of the studio.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Great story! The beat poet and the professional musicians. So this is your father-in-law:

Cool!

[mood swung]

Well, worlds collide. I was reading the Buddha of Suburbia late last night, and in it Eva said to Karim something along the lines of do you know what Capote said about Kerouac? 'That's not writing, that's TYPING.' and a few lines later she says that the cruelest thing to do is to re-read Kerouac at 38, to which I reluctantly agreed.

[alexv]

I've read a few of Karen Armstrong's books. Here stuff is informative and well written. Her latest is "A History of God". Good stuff again, but marred by an unrelenting heavy-handed assault on what she sees as the West's misdeeds. Here's just a few:

On science and religion: "Science has been felt to be threatening only by Western Christians who get in the habit of reading the scriptures literally". Her idea here stems from a major theme of the book, that the loss of faith happens primarily when you take the scriptures literally and personalize God, which leaves out the mystery and leaves you open to scientific assault. Fair enough, but why assume that the threat posed by science exists only in the West. Evidence?

On sex and god: "the Western God has been used to alienate people from their humanity and from sexual passion by means of life-denying asceticism." As an atheist I happen to agree, but again why is this only a Western problem?

On Freud: "Like many Western people, Freud seemed unaware of an internalized subjective God" I loved this if only because it is the only time i've ever seen Freud, who was clearly one of a kind, likened to "many Western people".

On women and the West: "The position of women was particularly poor in ancient Greece, a fact that Western people should remember when they decry the patriarchical attitudes of the Orient" How's that for argument? you point to ancient Greece and use that as a means of comparison to today's Orient? Weren't there slaves in Greece?

on women and islam: "Unfortunately, as in Christianity, the religion was hijacked by the men who interpreted texts in a way that was negative for Muslim women." Here the tool of argument is to thrown in the "as in Christianity". You say we're bad, well you're just as bad, so there.

On America: "Many americans who no longer believe in God subscribe to the Puritan work ethic and Calvinist notions of election, seeing themselves as a "chosen nation." This little chestnut comes right out of the history books, and was true enough at one time. Step out into Lexington Avenue today and ask around to see how many Puritans there are, and dig a little to see what people think of the Puritan work ethic and American's chosen nation status, and you'll have a falaffel thrown at you in disgust by a hard-working Palestinian vendor.

Western Christians: "Western Christians have been particularly prone to the flattering belief that they are God's elect" And what about the other guys?

On Islam and intolerance: "The intolerance that many people condemn in Islam today does not always stem from a rival vision of God but from intolerance of injustice by their own rulers (the Shah) or by powerful western countries." I see, that explains it.

[Jack of All Parades]

Mood- have to agree that most of Kerouac is turgid but my fondness for him hinges on this book and The Dharma Bums. As I say they have taught me some valuable life lessons. Further no less an author than John Updike has always contended in interviews that as he was being formed as a writer in the late 40s and early 50s two authors most influenced him- Salinger and Kerouac. He liked the tenderness and real character development found in Salinger's stories and he loved the energy and verve found in Kerouac with his just sit and write style which he always tried to emulate contending that he rarely revised his material, just like Kerouac, he just let it spill out[hard to imagine with his lapidary prose style but that is what he claimed].

Alexv- that is why I remain an atheist. Cannot get involved in that bickering.

Otis. That would be him. Always the natty dresser. We have a photo in the house on the wall going up the stairs that has him standing with Charlie Parker outside of some club, probably on 53rd street, and he so well dressed, looking like Parker's accountant or agent. That was just the way they presented themselves very well attired. He was a fun man to be around with his love of word play and bad jokes. He could do the NY Times crossword puzzle in a rapid amount of time[something his daughter, my wife, has inherited as an ability]. That horn is up in the attic. Always the working musician, though, from the earliest age. He was a product of that famous high school in Brooklyn, Erasmus High, and with fellow classmates, Alan Greenspan and Leonard Garment, played in the school orchestra and band. He went on to a long and productive musical career. Needless to say Greenspan gave up music and went on to head the Federal Reserve and Garment to be a successful national Union attorney and the personal attorney for Richard Nixon. In the 70's when regular work began to dry up for the old time jazz artists he reached his nadir performing in the pit band for Elvis Presley at Madison Square Garden in 1973. It was a good paying gig at least.

A quote attributed to Stan Getz sums him up "the perfect tenor player would have Al's musical intelligence, Zoot's technical ability and my lyricism". Now that would be some player. He not only was the favorite player for Kerouac, along with Zoot, but he was equally, along with Zoot, the favorite player for Tony Bennett. In fact a few years back when Mr. Bennett celebrated his 80th birthday with a big celebration he specifically had Al's son along with his partner Harry Allen provide the music for the party as a tribute to Al. My brother-in-law backed up EC and Mrs. EC that evening as they serenaded Tony. In truth my brother-in -law has known Mrs. EC going back to her days in Boston as she got her career started in that area, playing on club dates with her. Music has been a big part of my wife's life and an interest we share amongst many others. Her mother was a good singer in her prime and had a regular gig at the Rainbow Room in the Empire State building in the 60s and 70s. You can check her out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRjE7D5B580
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mgnyjzex8Q

[alexv]

"Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Life" by Gerald Martin. The official biography. I am not a huge fan of Marquez. I've only read "100 Years..." and "Love in the Time of Cholera". Of the two, Love is my favorite. My father, like most Cuban exiles, despised Marquez for his fawning over Castro, but I prevailed upon him to read "100 Years". This was a long time ago, but I still remember how impressed he was by the book, returning it to me with a grudging acknowledgment of the book's greatness. I do remember him adding that Marquez "Esta un poco loco, verdad."

Anyway, the biography is a labor of love, undertaken over close to a twenty year period. You learn everything you ever wanted to know about marquez, his ancestors, Colombia and yes even Fidel. There's maybe too much information, but the more esoteric stuff can be easily skipped. He's had a truly incredible life, and the book is terrific. My favorite bits:

as a young man, working as a reporter for a paper in Colombia, he gets sent to Paris to cover some political event. He stays for 3 years, after losing his job with the paper. He's so poor that he ends up eating garbage to survive (but of course finds time for an affair with a gorgeous and intellectual spanish lady).

much later, living in Mexico, and working as a successful marketing man and scriptwriter, he's taking his family for a vacation in Cancun. On the drive over, he gets the inspiration for the first lines of "100 years". He turns the car around, the vacation is cancelled, he quits his job and for the next 2 years he devotes himself with complete abandon to the completion of the novel. No money comes in, the rent is chronically overdue, and the long-suffering wife is forced to bargain with the butcher for meat on credit. As he nears completion of the novel, he sends portions to friends all over latin america (vargas llosa and fuentes among them) and receives rave reviews from one and all. He's done it. He doesn't have enough money to send the completed manuscript to the publisher in BA, so he and the wife have to break up the parcel into two parts to get it mailed. Immediate success follows, along with fame and fortune.

The book is marred only by the author's obvious love for his subject and lack of objectivity, and, for me, by the Cuba and USA stuff.

On his love for his subject, how's this for a summing up: Marquez was well on his way to becoming a theme park all of his own, a monument without parallel in the literary world since Cervantes, Shakespeare or Tolstoy. [!!] He's good, even great, but not all that. A certain Mr. Paul Giles will get the last licks in on the Cervantes thing though. See below.

On the USA, we get the usual overblown and unfair rhetoric: "On September 11 the twin towers were brought down... and world politics changed dramatically, accelerating on the path to war that GWB had already seemed determined upon, though this was not quite the script that Bush had envisaged." Notice how he throws in "seemed' just before asserting that GWB had already determined upon war. Why is this necessary in a literary biography? Elsewhere he says that GWB had an official invasion plan for Cuba. Really?

On Cuba, the author struggles with explaining away the Marquez/Castro love affair. He sets it up early in the book by saying "GM would several times in the future argue that a progressive dictatorship was better than a fascistic government doing mischief under the cover of a false democracy". Nice. This is how the author (not Marquez) describes Castro: "a socialist liberator who was, as it turned out, the Latin American politician with the potential to become the most durable and the most loved of all the continent's authoritarian figures." I assume the author never spent a day in the Cuban hell created by the 'liberator'.

Marquez loves movies, so there's lots of good movie stuff, with him visiting Cinecitta in the 50s etc. But there's some odd stuff: Redford gets referred to as "radical" film maker and Woody is a "progressive" director. I did not know that.

In the end, however, Marquez gets brought down to earth by an Englishman, in a way that is eerily reminiscent of the kind of "british" behavior that EC complains so much about these days. Marquez, like most good and rich radicals, always made sure his kids went to English or American private schools. He sent the kids to the Colegio Kensington in Barcelona, and ran into some trouble with the English headmaster, a Mr. Paul Giles (Yorkshireman). What did Mr. Giles think of Marquez? "I didn't pay him much attention, he wasn't that well known in those days. He was pleasant enough but also rather aggressive. I assumed he had a chip on his shoulder against the English. But why be disagreeable about other people's cultures? I mean why pour beer in someone else's Beaujolais?...Do you think GGM is as good as they say? What, as good as Cervantes? Good Lord, who says that? Him, I should think." Cervantes indeed.

[Otis Westinghouse]

Love the story about the Cancun holiday! Straight out of a novel. I guess he made it up to his family eventually. Something about going to see ice being made, correct? Aurelio Buendia. I've only read that one (and in English, desgraciadamente), but loved it immensely. Would like to try others in his native tongue, though I guess I'd be even slower that way.

[Jack of All Parades]

I like the Cervantes quip, am appreciating that droll matter-of-fact Britishness. I can admire Marquez and what he has accomplished but I am naturally drawn more to Borges by temperament with his intricate stories and love of books and libraries. This leads to a recently read book that I stumbled upon, The Book on the Shelf by Henry Petroski, a professor of engineering and history at Duke. This is just a great read inspired by a love of books and their history as written texts evolving from ancient times. You go from papyrus scrolls to the internet with interesting stops all along the way. You are taken on tours of the great libraries: The Bodleian Library, The Widener Library, the Great Reading Room in the British Museum[which took my breath away when I first walked into it years ago], the Library of Congress, and the Beinicke Library at Yale, even my old haunt, Butler Library at Columbia. But most of all you are treated to how written texts have changed over the years and the great efforts made by individuals to create their own collections[I particularly liked the discussion of Pepy's great collection and how he saved it during the Great Fire].

Petroski takes great pains to explain how the printing press changed the way books have been made and stored or shelved as well as how they were transformed over the centuries into collectible items. The tidbits one picks up include the fact that books were originally stored in medieval times with their spines in and that only with the construction of bookcases were they shown with the spine faced out. I never realized that books were one time chained to desks in monasterys as a way of storage. I loved the discussion of great bookstores and how they shelve their stock[there is a wonderful example made of a store in Durham, NC called the Book Exchange and billed as 'the South's Greatest Bookstore'[a place I am sure Pophead 2k is familiar with]. As a bibliophile I cannot praise this book enough. I look forward to reading his books on design and creativity and inspiration.

[nord]

-On the route of the 19 bus!



London Calling have been my favourite record for almost 30 years.

http://www.clashcity.com/boards/viewtop ... f=7&t=4578

[Jack of All Parades]

Not a bad album to have as a favorite-treated myself to the anniversary triple album remaster a few years ago- is this book a 'how it was made' text or is it an overview of their career?

[Boy With A Problem]

Thanks for posting that Nord. I read the entire thread you linked to - almost made me want to jump in with my thoughts on the state of American radio in 1980 and seeing the Clash on the 16 Tons Tour. Have you read Last Gang in Town? - It's in the big pile of unread books in my attic - I should dig it out. I played the hell out London Calling - and remember buying it with Xmas money the day after Xmas - driving with friends 70 miles to pick up the import - it wouldn't come out in the US for at least another month and there was no way we were going to wait.

[Otis Westinghouse]

It gets listed as 'one of the best albums of the 80s', but it was, as you so clearly and memorably illustrate, a 1979 release (unless you're in the US!). Wish I'd seen them live. Another item I have on CD that I can now go back to the vinyl and crank up.

[nord]

The book is about the London Calling album. " "The Beatles" had their lumps felt in "Revolution in the Head", and "Bob Dylan" had his hinterland explored in "Invisible Republic". Now "The Clash"'s finest hour and five minutes gets a book telling when, how and where it was made, detailing the stories behind its songs, placing the album in contexts personal, musical and socio-political, noting its impact upon release, and considering the ripple effects since, both in The Clash members' own careers and 'in the culture'."

Yes, I have read Last Gang in Town. Bought the updated Return of the Last Gang in Town. One of the better Clash books.

Some of my Clash books:



I really like the photo book Before & After. Photos by Pennie Smith (there are some of her photos in Complicated Shadows and in the Rhino reissues).