It’s pretty fascinating to me that the internet has such an active fandom for A Series of Unfortunate Events, because I haven’t read those books in a million years, or, more specifically, since 2006, when the last book came out. I used to be obsessed, I tell you, obsessed.
I was nine years old, on vacation with the extended family, when one of my cousins first lent me her copy of The Bad Beginning. I was young enough then that about ninety percent of the snide comedy in it got past me and all I knew was, Oh my gosh, what a brilliant and evil villain! He’s got their sister trapped in a birdcage and he’s going to marry Violet to get her inheritance! And, you know, at the end he vows to hunt them down and “kill” them, which is fightin’ words for a kid’s book, so I was gone. I still remember going to the bookstore in maybe September of that year or October, and my mom gently saying something along the lines of, “You know, there are other books besides Lemony Snicket,” because possibly my determination to get my hands around a copy of The Reptile Room had by that point seeped through her last nerve.
Still, she got into Lemony Snicket pretty quickly after my sister Mary started checking them out of the library and reading them aloud to her, because she picked up on all the comedy we were missing. (She couldn’t get over Olaf dressed up as a woman to kidnap/adopt the orphans in The Miserable Mill: "I’m a poor little receptionist who’s always wanted children of her own. Three children, in fact: a smarty-pants little girl, a hypnotized little boy, and a buck-toothed baby!”)
But the irony is that the death of the comedic overtones that initially got past me also spelled death for the series in general. The last one I one-hundred-percent enjoyed was Book 10 of 13, The Slippery Slope, which was already treading on, well, slippery ground with its lengthy discussions of relativism, not to mention all the kissy-kissy between Violet and Quigley Quagmire (I liked Quigley fine but was too young to be overly invested in shipping; Klaus’s later love interest Fiona I found irritating and unnecessary). There’s a specific part where the kids are about to build a trap for Olaf’s villainous girlfriend Esme Squalor so they can hold her for ransom in order to retrieve Sunny, who’s been kidnapped again, and Klaus gets all wishy-washy and starts quoting Nietzsche’s bit about fighting monsters and looking into the abyss (first time I ever heard it), and all I could think was, "What? She’s been trying to kill you for money! You’re not even planning to hurt her! You’re rescuing your sister, who’s too young to even talk, from a known criminal with zero compunctions!”
Then they end up kidnapping Esme anyway, so the aside does nothing other than make us doubt the goodness of our heroes, which is a weird murky feeling and one you should certainly not inflict on your reader if you aren’t going to follow it up. (In the words of Ray Bradbury: “Above all, sicken me not unless you show me the way to the ship’s rail.”) Nowadays I might be inclined to appreciate the fact that a kid’s book even touched the subject of morality, but at the time I was more concerned about the fact that they did it wrong.
And from that point, as the preaching got more pronounced and more dreary with each new installment, Count Olaf lost the edge that made him simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. He became merely laughable, but not in a funny way. In the first chapter of The End, for instance (which I maintain ought to have been called The Erroneous Ending), he’s trapped on a small boat with the Baudelaires, a situation that in the first book would have had them out of their minds with terror. Instead, we get a running gag where he keeps asking him to drive them to a repair shop (if I recall correctly) and they just roll their eyes because surely he’s not dumb enough to think that’s even possible? And we’re taken from a potentially deadly and dynamic situation to a couple kids out on a fishing trip with Lame Dad.
The series only worked in the first place because the author wasn’t taking it seriously (or rather, Lemony Snicket, the character, was—Daniel Handler wasn’t), but The End is nothing but chapter after chapter of Snicket taking himself seriously. There are elaborate biblical parallels with a false Messiah who owns a flock of sheep and convinces everyone on the island to simply evacuate after they get infected by a deadly fungus, rather than eat an apple that serves as the antidote. (By the way, who finds this apple? A snake. Ahem.) Then Count Olaf receives a syrupy and dramatic death that he has done nothing to merit, as it had been about three books since the last time he was a genuine threat, as witness boat conversation in Chapter 1.
In short, everything that should have been scary was funny, and everything that should have been funny was scary—and as a result, nothing was funny or scary. Like lowering the contrast on an image: sooner or later you’re left with nothing but blankness.
I was so unsatisfied by The End that I went through that temporary stage of denial where I mentally insisted that it was a great conclusion, but it faded. I think that other people felt the same way, because the buzz of conversation surrounding the series stopped, like a radio switched abruptly off. Or those are my memories, at any rate. Maybe I should read these books again.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
She strode in a swarm of fireflies
This afternoon, burn down the house. Tomorrow, pour critical water upon the simmering coals. Time enough to think and cut and rewrite tomorrow. But today--explode--fly apart--disintegrate!
- Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of WritingAhhh, don't let Tumblr distract you, Allie! (But the fandoms!) Focus!
Tonight I finished another short story--the second in as many weeks. It's only because this class has been sitting on my head, putting the pressure on me to do something, but I feel like Ray Bradbury. His book Zen in the Art of Writing (title is kind of misleading--it's the name of one of the essays contained within) has been a constant inspiration to me lately. It lights up that thing in my head that wants to write.
Maybe this blog can be my yellow pad and my Ticonderoga pencil, like Douglas Spaulding's setup in Dandelion Wine, to whittle down the truths found in a summer. I've been picking up truths off the trees like berries lately, new ideas I can set to distill.
At any rate, read poetry every day, he says somewhere in Zen in the Art of Writing. I'm pretty sure I do that anyway, but I nonetheless go to the library and get out a volume of Alexander Pope. He's slow going--he takes digesting, more so than Shakespeare--but the wisdom! The classical structure of the lines! I love him, even if I only have two bites a sitting. And then I flip to the beginning of Zen and read more carefully and I find out one of Bradbury's favorite poets was Alexander Pope. It's things like that that make me feel like Ray Bradbury knighted me in the same way Mr. Electrico knighted him, ignited him--live forever!
And then I went to the library today and found his other favorite poet, also one of my favorites and a key provider of the Bradbury DNA--Dylan Thomas. I had to chose between two volumes that both began I see the boys of summer in their ruin. Well, I don't want to be in my ruin. I write, Bradbury says, to know that I am not dead.
This line from Fahrenheit 451 keeps coming back to me--He strode in a swarm of fireflies. Which is to say, books, words, pages that have caught fire and gone up in tiny sparks.
Monday, June 17, 2013
I'm reading Looking for Alaska right now
I’m not sure how to feel about it. I’ve read little snippets and bits of it before. I have had the entire plot spoiled for me by the Internet, but that doesn’t much matter; it’s not one of those books that relies strictly on a twist.
I really wanted to hate it, but I couldn’t, at least at first. The flow of the book is very good—I can’t think of another word for it. It’s that feeling that a book is comfortable to inhabit; that I can suspend my disbelief and settle into it without always thinking how I’m going to word the review.
I liked the first couple of chapters best, because they chronicled the protagonist’s out-of-placeness in a new setting and that’s a feeling I understand well. There’s duct tape and a lake and his crush on Alaska and all of this is great; I was going, man, they’re right: maybe this thing is a classic.
Then he ended up rooming with a clever, funny dude who liked him and fell in immediately with the cigarette-smoking Smart Kids, which seemed almost too easy. Drinks and Kurt Vonnegut in a field; it almost makes you wonder if John Green has ever read Kurt Vonnegut or if he thought, “college thing, gotta have it”. He has his characters archly fling the word “pretentious” around, as if to keep critics from using that word in reviews.
It’s all a part of that tendency—a trademark of John Green novels—for every single character to be so darn clever that it’s almost precious. His writing is always flow-y enough that it’s just barely believable, but the sharp edges of unrealism poke through the fabric. It echoes the epigrammic nature of certain passages of Oscar Wilde; quit it with the fortune cookies already, Oscar.
John Green is a genuinely intelligent guy and it bugs me that he’s putting all his intelligence into the promotion of this kind of coffee-shop philosophy the characters talk, which caffeinates but does not satisfy, which falls just short of the real thing. I like to talk that kind of shop myself because it’s fun to do, but there’s no viable alternative presented in Looking For Alaska, and I guess we’re expected to think that that’s the end of it: that what we read on our Starbucks sleeve or emblazon at the top of a Tumblr blog is just as good as what we’ve learned from history, religion or experience.
I really wanted to hate it, but I couldn’t, at least at first. The flow of the book is very good—I can’t think of another word for it. It’s that feeling that a book is comfortable to inhabit; that I can suspend my disbelief and settle into it without always thinking how I’m going to word the review.
I liked the first couple of chapters best, because they chronicled the protagonist’s out-of-placeness in a new setting and that’s a feeling I understand well. There’s duct tape and a lake and his crush on Alaska and all of this is great; I was going, man, they’re right: maybe this thing is a classic.
Then he ended up rooming with a clever, funny dude who liked him and fell in immediately with the cigarette-smoking Smart Kids, which seemed almost too easy. Drinks and Kurt Vonnegut in a field; it almost makes you wonder if John Green has ever read Kurt Vonnegut or if he thought, “college thing, gotta have it”. He has his characters archly fling the word “pretentious” around, as if to keep critics from using that word in reviews.
It’s all a part of that tendency—a trademark of John Green novels—for every single character to be so darn clever that it’s almost precious. His writing is always flow-y enough that it’s just barely believable, but the sharp edges of unrealism poke through the fabric. It echoes the epigrammic nature of certain passages of Oscar Wilde; quit it with the fortune cookies already, Oscar.
John Green is a genuinely intelligent guy and it bugs me that he’s putting all his intelligence into the promotion of this kind of coffee-shop philosophy the characters talk, which caffeinates but does not satisfy, which falls just short of the real thing. I like to talk that kind of shop myself because it’s fun to do, but there’s no viable alternative presented in Looking For Alaska, and I guess we’re expected to think that that’s the end of it: that what we read on our Starbucks sleeve or emblazon at the top of a Tumblr blog is just as good as what we’ve learned from history, religion or experience.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Review: Horse's Neck by Pete Townshend
In the introduction to Horse’s Neck, his mid-80's foray into short fiction, Pete Townshend writes a thesis statement, or perhaps a muttered excuse for authoring fiction instead of the autobiography that fans had long been demanding of him. (It didn’t come to pass until 2012: see Who I Am.) “I have never wanted”, he claims, “simply to tell my own story.”
The irony is that Townshend might, in fact, make quite a decent short-story writer if he would just stop being so autobiographical. In one story he writes about a nameless alcoholic who is obviously him, but who can’t be him because the nameless one is a simple town-dwelling laborer and his dramas happen at football matches and pubs instead of at rock concerts and riotous afterparties. (Also, this man has two sons where Townshend has two daughters—a cover-up doubtless designed to protect Townshend’s cringing offspring, whatever their gender.) In the next story he writes from the point of view of another nameless alcoholic man who can’t possibly not be him, as he’s with a well-known band and trapped in an ongoing riotous afterparty that can be described by no less banal a word than “banal”. (“Layers upon layers of cheap nightclub hypocrisy” is Townshend’s phrase, and later down the page he adds, “The boredom was really quite exquisite.”) In the story after that, he gives up altogether and calls his main character “Pete.” (Sample sentence, written without a shred of irony: “Pete was a singer with a band.” Perhaps he went back and changed “guitarist” to “singer” with the sole purpose of putting a Saran Wrap-thin layer of fiction between himself and the main character.) As a composer, Townshend once spent a whole album, Quadrophenia, diving into the mind of a man with four separate personalities; as a writer, he dips into a thousand meaningless minds, all exactly the same.
It may seem paradoxical to describe the writing as “unpretentiously pretentious”, but that’s exactly what it is. Pete Townshend writes, and has always written, pretentiously; he does so with no pretention, because that’s the way he actually thinks. At times his writing has exactly the awkwardness one might expect from a lyricist clumsily attempting fiction; at other times he pulls a cracking sentence from seemingly nowhere: “He was fulfilled as usual, heart ginger-warm; but the feeling on this particular evening was different, like finding a new finger among the familiar five.”
All this would be fine and curious, even wonderful, except that Townshend has perhaps downed a bit too much James Joyce before the outing and vomited it up the wrong way. He gravitates toward the incomprehensible like a moth toward a candle, seemingly unaware that the power of his interviews and his lyrics always lay in their accessibility. That line about exquisite boredom applies neatly to just about any diversion from the narrative, and Townshend’s main character, like all of us, is easily distracted by any shade or symbol of himself, whether it be a childhood memory or a reflection in the mirror. If any girl, of any make or model whatsoever, enters the story, you may be sure that sex is immediately forthcoming, whether casual, dissatisfied sex or the longed-for encounter with a target of obsessive love. But the line of girls becomes pretty same-ish as Townshend fails to access the soul of a single one of them. In fact, he fails to access the soul of anyone save himself.
And of himself he extracts nothing but the darkest and dreariest. “Each story”, his introduction claims, “deals with some aspect of my struggle to discover what beauty really is.” Of struggle there is plenty, but it’s all personal and mental struggling rather than up-front responses to problems; the book, having confined itself to one psyche, reads something like one of those confused, dissatisfying dreams where the goal is never quite accomplished. The chapter in which he actually discovers beauty is never written. He takes a crack at it in the final “story”, “Laguna: Valentine’s Day 1982”, but the result is embarrassing and deeply off-putting. I can only conclude that Townshend meant the stories—written at a time in his life when he was estranged from his wife and struggling with alcoholism and drug addiction—as personal carthasis, an exorcism of rock-star demons. Maybe they were something he needed to write; most of them are not, by any stretch of the imagination, something we need to read. They should have remained buried somewhere among his private papers, though I suppose I have little room to berate him for the fact that they’ve been out in the open since nearly a decade before I was born; the book has been out of print almost as long. We all make rash decisions, and maybe Pete regretted his.
On that note, the constant graphic sexual references and themes found in Horse’s Neck are disquieting at best and mortifying at worst. The same loose-cannon style of conversation that makes Townshend fascinating and challenging as an interview subject here verges on Tourette’s Syndrome, and if there was any editor in the house, he was asleep. The worst sketch as far as this goes is perhaps the seemingly interminable “Plate”, which starts out as a shallow detective fiction and becomes a disgusting and meaningless tale about watching a girl while she dresses and undresses. A male fan of Townshend might read it without feeling violated. For me, a girl (and not a squeamish one), the story, and one image in particular, have rather spoiled the taste of my Who music for the time being. (See: James Joyce’s gross-out love letters to Nora Barnacle, which I have little doubt Townshend read.)
It isn’t all abstract: Townshend ventures vaguely homeward in “Fish Shop” (the story with the nearest approximation of a plot), refers obscurely to the deaths of manager Keith Lambert and drummer Keith Moon (“Pancho and the Baron”), and recalls past Rolling Stone interviews in “A Death of the Day Of”, which ends on a near-suicidal note that eerily foreshadows the demise of Kurt Cobain.
Quite rightly, the most critically-praised sketch in this distended muddle is a little number called “Champagne on the Terraces”; although, like most sequences in the book, it’s more extended monologue than short story, it does a good job of delving into Townshend’s tortured personal life as a blissful alternative to his tortured thoughts, giving the book some much-needed reality. The gem of the wreck, however, is “Winston”—a Ray Bradbury-styled spilling of words which congeals as a maddening and revealing meditation on the murder of John Lennon.
[I must end this review by noting that, as a musician, Pete Townshend apparently prefers to be known as simply “Pete”: his last straw during the Lifehouse sessions was having fatherly manager Kit Lambert coldly refer to him as “Townshend”. However, the Pete of Horse’s Neck is a Townshend treading, as during Lifehouse, into the wrong waters, and thus well deserves the cold water of his surname to bring him to his senses.]
The irony is that Townshend might, in fact, make quite a decent short-story writer if he would just stop being so autobiographical. In one story he writes about a nameless alcoholic who is obviously him, but who can’t be him because the nameless one is a simple town-dwelling laborer and his dramas happen at football matches and pubs instead of at rock concerts and riotous afterparties. (Also, this man has two sons where Townshend has two daughters—a cover-up doubtless designed to protect Townshend’s cringing offspring, whatever their gender.) In the next story he writes from the point of view of another nameless alcoholic man who can’t possibly not be him, as he’s with a well-known band and trapped in an ongoing riotous afterparty that can be described by no less banal a word than “banal”. (“Layers upon layers of cheap nightclub hypocrisy” is Townshend’s phrase, and later down the page he adds, “The boredom was really quite exquisite.”) In the story after that, he gives up altogether and calls his main character “Pete.” (Sample sentence, written without a shred of irony: “Pete was a singer with a band.” Perhaps he went back and changed “guitarist” to “singer” with the sole purpose of putting a Saran Wrap-thin layer of fiction between himself and the main character.) As a composer, Townshend once spent a whole album, Quadrophenia, diving into the mind of a man with four separate personalities; as a writer, he dips into a thousand meaningless minds, all exactly the same.
It may seem paradoxical to describe the writing as “unpretentiously pretentious”, but that’s exactly what it is. Pete Townshend writes, and has always written, pretentiously; he does so with no pretention, because that’s the way he actually thinks. At times his writing has exactly the awkwardness one might expect from a lyricist clumsily attempting fiction; at other times he pulls a cracking sentence from seemingly nowhere: “He was fulfilled as usual, heart ginger-warm; but the feeling on this particular evening was different, like finding a new finger among the familiar five.”
All this would be fine and curious, even wonderful, except that Townshend has perhaps downed a bit too much James Joyce before the outing and vomited it up the wrong way. He gravitates toward the incomprehensible like a moth toward a candle, seemingly unaware that the power of his interviews and his lyrics always lay in their accessibility. That line about exquisite boredom applies neatly to just about any diversion from the narrative, and Townshend’s main character, like all of us, is easily distracted by any shade or symbol of himself, whether it be a childhood memory or a reflection in the mirror. If any girl, of any make or model whatsoever, enters the story, you may be sure that sex is immediately forthcoming, whether casual, dissatisfied sex or the longed-for encounter with a target of obsessive love. But the line of girls becomes pretty same-ish as Townshend fails to access the soul of a single one of them. In fact, he fails to access the soul of anyone save himself.
And of himself he extracts nothing but the darkest and dreariest. “Each story”, his introduction claims, “deals with some aspect of my struggle to discover what beauty really is.” Of struggle there is plenty, but it’s all personal and mental struggling rather than up-front responses to problems; the book, having confined itself to one psyche, reads something like one of those confused, dissatisfying dreams where the goal is never quite accomplished. The chapter in which he actually discovers beauty is never written. He takes a crack at it in the final “story”, “Laguna: Valentine’s Day 1982”, but the result is embarrassing and deeply off-putting. I can only conclude that Townshend meant the stories—written at a time in his life when he was estranged from his wife and struggling with alcoholism and drug addiction—as personal carthasis, an exorcism of rock-star demons. Maybe they were something he needed to write; most of them are not, by any stretch of the imagination, something we need to read. They should have remained buried somewhere among his private papers, though I suppose I have little room to berate him for the fact that they’ve been out in the open since nearly a decade before I was born; the book has been out of print almost as long. We all make rash decisions, and maybe Pete regretted his.
On that note, the constant graphic sexual references and themes found in Horse’s Neck are disquieting at best and mortifying at worst. The same loose-cannon style of conversation that makes Townshend fascinating and challenging as an interview subject here verges on Tourette’s Syndrome, and if there was any editor in the house, he was asleep. The worst sketch as far as this goes is perhaps the seemingly interminable “Plate”, which starts out as a shallow detective fiction and becomes a disgusting and meaningless tale about watching a girl while she dresses and undresses. A male fan of Townshend might read it without feeling violated. For me, a girl (and not a squeamish one), the story, and one image in particular, have rather spoiled the taste of my Who music for the time being. (See: James Joyce’s gross-out love letters to Nora Barnacle, which I have little doubt Townshend read.)
It isn’t all abstract: Townshend ventures vaguely homeward in “Fish Shop” (the story with the nearest approximation of a plot), refers obscurely to the deaths of manager Keith Lambert and drummer Keith Moon (“Pancho and the Baron”), and recalls past Rolling Stone interviews in “A Death of the Day Of”, which ends on a near-suicidal note that eerily foreshadows the demise of Kurt Cobain.
Quite rightly, the most critically-praised sketch in this distended muddle is a little number called “Champagne on the Terraces”; although, like most sequences in the book, it’s more extended monologue than short story, it does a good job of delving into Townshend’s tortured personal life as a blissful alternative to his tortured thoughts, giving the book some much-needed reality. The gem of the wreck, however, is “Winston”—a Ray Bradbury-styled spilling of words which congeals as a maddening and revealing meditation on the murder of John Lennon.
[I must end this review by noting that, as a musician, Pete Townshend apparently prefers to be known as simply “Pete”: his last straw during the Lifehouse sessions was having fatherly manager Kit Lambert coldly refer to him as “Townshend”. However, the Pete of Horse’s Neck is a Townshend treading, as during Lifehouse, into the wrong waters, and thus well deserves the cold water of his surname to bring him to his senses.]
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Album Review: Oh, Inverted World by The Shins
"You've got to hear this one song, it'll change your life I swear."That's not a Shins lyric. I know it sounds as if it should be, with the scansion and everything, but if you want a second line you'll be left hanging. It's a well-known quote from the film Garden State about The Shins' song "New Slang". "New Slang"--that's a memorable title, right? Just like Oh, Inverted World. In fact, memorable, rhythmic titles are a bit of a thing with our friends The Shins. I run my eyes down the track listing and see, not only "New Slang", but "Caring is Creepy", "Weird Divide", "Know Your Onion!", "Girl Inform Me". In a modernist way, they could almost pass for the names of classic theatrical cartoons. "Lady Play Your Mandolin" would be a good name for a Shins song.
I've got a couple of sisters and a mom who are all cooler than me. They all, at variant times, got into The Shins. I never did, even though we all use the same iTunes. Not even the titles enticed me, and you all know titles are my favorite thing. I didn't know one Shins song. So I lazed through life, listening to cheap stuff like The Killers, while the rest of the womenfolk gushed behind me, as if they were blossoming, about tracks like "Girl on the Wing" and "The Celibate Life."
However, when my sisters go to concerts we go together, and when they obtain concert tickets they get me one, too. Thus it was that I ended up at Green Day directly after midterms just as I was digesting the news of a less-than-satisfactory grade, feeling subway-weary and battered about the skull, and thus it was that Clair ambled up to me one morning less than two weeks ago and told me I had two weeks to get into The Shins. Okay, I'll take it.
They've got four albums, all of which we own, and Oh, Inverted World is only the first. I thought I'd take them in order. Yet here I am, nearly two weeks later, and still I'm listening to Oh, Inverted World. Just listening to it over and over again, like a stoner.
So why, you want to know? Did it change my life?
The opposite, actually. It isn't sticking.
It's sugar on the tongue--I think I like it, but it melts away as soon as I've heard it, and then I forget the way it tasted.
I feel as if I'm cramming for one of those exams where cramming doesn't seem to have any effect. Or maybe I feel as if halfway through a day I remember a great idea I had, and then with a sinking feeling I remember that I only had it in a dream and promptly forgot it when I woke up. No traction, no purchase. If it were a vinyl and I were a needle I'd slide off it without making a sound.
Yet even now as I check the track listing to identify the song currently playing (it's "Know Your Onion"), I can hear Clair singing along in the other room, to words that even her high voice isn't making clear to me.
I thought that was my difficulty at first--the words. Oh, Inverted World has that frustrating Nirvana quality--the vocals are, just barely, too murky to be made out. But at least Kurt Cobain put all his slurred singing on top of leaden tunes so heavy they stuck in your head, so if you didn't know them you could snarl along: "rahrah rah rah, rah rahhh rah rah rah rah rah rah rah rah rah, she's so rah rah, and sellllllf-assuuuured…" And that way, everyone knew Nirvana's songs, even if they never did.
I looked up a few of The Shin's lyrics, and they were lovely stand-alone pieces--rhythmic and abstract, the sort of things that I'd repeat to myself all day long if I read them in a poetry book, or in The New Yorker, or on the back of a Simon and Garfunkel album sleeve. But try as I might, I couldn't connect a single one to a tune.
And it's not as if I don't know the tunes. I can hum snatches of them to myself, little fabric-swatches of melody, but I can't remember what songs they go to. I only know when I can look at my phone while the song is playing and see the title. It's that feeling like when you have a box of fancy chocolates and they give you a little map to identify which is which, but you're holding it backwards and you have the sneaking suspicion that it's your other left, and then you turn it around and reach for one and find yourself wincing as you bite into one of those horrible strawberry things when all you wanted was a truffle.
Only imagine if you bit into those chocolates and all of them were made of thin air, and that'll give you a pretty good idea how I'm feeling right now.
In fact, maybe I'm writing this review just to feel some sense of ownership of the band. If I write the review, I'm thinking, I'll get them on paper and they won't slip through my grasp. I'll be able to go to the concert and actually know them, own them!
(My sister Mary just came in, heard the unidentifiable track I was listening to, said softly, "'Your Algebra'," and sang along in a low voice, too quietly for me to hear.)
I don't know if this is really a review of the album. After all, it's only me to whom this happens. Maybe it's more a review of myself. I've worked okay up until now, but I seem to be a bit defective. Send me back.
Monday, May 20, 2013
I'm learning not to apologize for going through phases on different blogging platforms.
You write in the notebook you've got in front of you, ain't it the truth? You pour your tea into whatever mug is most convenient.
I don't mind it if I've got my brain backed up on a million hard-drives, because you know what? It wouldn't fit into one notebook anyway.
Anyhow, if you're crazy enough to miss me then stagger on over to Tumblr and read this review I wrote of The Who's album Tommy. It's a long-winded and overwrought review, but that's okay. Tommy is a long-winded and overwrought LP.
Clair and I have a nice evening planned with a book to read (probably The Great Gatsby because we want to see the movie next weekend, although East of Eden and In The Woods are also options) and snickerdoodles in honor of Astrid Kirchherr's birthday (one of Clair's favorite photographers--she bought the cookies first and then retroactively made them about Astrid when I informed her of the occasion. We're going to maybe make Kirchherr cookies a yearly tradition now).
I don't mind it if I've got my brain backed up on a million hard-drives, because you know what? It wouldn't fit into one notebook anyway.
Anyhow, if you're crazy enough to miss me then stagger on over to Tumblr and read this review I wrote of The Who's album Tommy. It's a long-winded and overwrought review, but that's okay. Tommy is a long-winded and overwrought LP.
Clair and I have a nice evening planned with a book to read (probably The Great Gatsby because we want to see the movie next weekend, although East of Eden and In The Woods are also options) and snickerdoodles in honor of Astrid Kirchherr's birthday (one of Clair's favorite photographers--she bought the cookies first and then retroactively made them about Astrid when I informed her of the occasion. We're going to maybe make Kirchherr cookies a yearly tradition now).
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Danielle's first suspicion
My sister Danielle, who just turned two: (runs into office) Allie, that a beetle?
Me: (sitting on office floor with my laptop) What?
Danielle: Is that a beetle?
Me: Is what? (Probably worth noting: I had been procrastinating on my essay by looking up pictures of The Beatles and I thought she'd developed some supernatural ability to apprehend my shenanigans.)
Danielle: (bends down and points to floor) Is that a beetle?
Me: No, that's not a beetle, I think you're okay. It's just some dirt on the floor.
Danielle: Okay. (runs out)
Me: Hey, that's the first full sentence you've ever said to me! High five!
Danielle: (giggles delightedly, runs back to meet me, looks down at floor again) …That's a beetle.
Only just talking and already she doesn't trust me.
Me: (sitting on office floor with my laptop) What?
Danielle: Is that a beetle?
Me: Is what? (Probably worth noting: I had been procrastinating on my essay by looking up pictures of The Beatles and I thought she'd developed some supernatural ability to apprehend my shenanigans.)
Danielle: (bends down and points to floor) Is that a beetle?
Me: No, that's not a beetle, I think you're okay. It's just some dirt on the floor.
Danielle: Okay. (runs out)
Me: Hey, that's the first full sentence you've ever said to me! High five!
Danielle: (giggles delightedly, runs back to meet me, looks down at floor again) …That's a beetle.
Only just talking and already she doesn't trust me.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
This is the limit
Well, I've tried not to obsess over the Gosnell Trial, because I figure plenty of other people are doing that for me. It speaks for itself, though, doesn't it? Your average pro-choicer is very much against late-term abortion, which kills a baby viable outside of the womb, for all intents and purposes ready to be born. There's no room there to argue about when life begins. And besides this guy casually taking a scissors to their spinal cords, you've got him preserving the feet in jars, for no reason that anyone can figure out. That is some deeply, deeply-rooted sadism, and that's without getting into all the woman he put through hell in his horror-house clinic; every time a new article comes out there's a brand-new incomprehensible offense toward humanity that they just discovered. It's that hypothetical alien invasion of earth: something every human being, regardless of ideology, can unite against.
So I haven't said much about it up until now, but then someone linked to the expansively-titled 2009 Salon article How abortion changed the world, which puts on proud display, flags fluttering, exactly the kind of thinking that could justify a Kermit Gosnell. The article provides a brief biography of 50s-to-70s underground abortionist Harvey Karman (a name which, coincidentally, sounds exactly like something they'd invent for a fictional abortionist based on Gosnell if they ever wanted to do a CSI episode). "Much of Karman’s early history is hazy," the article reports, "but one horrific incident stands out. In 1955, one of the women who sought Karman’s help died of an infection, and he was charged with both murder and abortion. A court rejected his insistence that he was a mere middleman between the woman and a doctor, finding that he himself had tried to induce a miscarriage using a speculum and a nutcracker." (Horrifying indeed, but the article doesn't make it clear enough for my liking whether the term "horrific incident" refers to the woman's death or the two years Karman spent in jail for it. If the latter, I can't help remembering those CNN reports of the Steubenville rape case, which all but wept over the destruction of the rapists' rosy futures while ignoring the victim's plight entirely.)
However, you can't keep a good man down: in two years Karman "emerged unfazed to resume the work that had become, for him, a kind of crusade." He took up a few hobbies such as film studies and working with juvenile delinquents, but "abortion remained his consuming passion." (Most pro-choice people would have to take issue with the wording of this: very few people really like abortion, even those who see it as a necessity. Helping women ought to be a consuming passion; abortion is not an appropriate consuming passion for a sane individual.) Eventually, his passion led him to create the prototype manual vacuum aspiration syringe, and this development is reported on with cavalier good humor and a general spirit of fun. Karman, according to his friend Dr. Malcom Potts,"was a very dexterous person. He used to make model airplanes when he was young. I once locked myself out of my car, and I’d never seen anybody break into a car as quickly as Harvey did. And he’s pretty good at breaking into the uterus." At this point, of course, I'm flickering my eyes to the top of the page to make sure this is really Salon.com and not some sick satire website.
"The attempt to liberate half the world’s people from the intertwined tyrannies of culture and biology is one of the least heralded but most ambitious global initiatives in history."
So I haven't said much about it up until now, but then someone linked to the expansively-titled 2009 Salon article How abortion changed the world, which puts on proud display, flags fluttering, exactly the kind of thinking that could justify a Kermit Gosnell. The article provides a brief biography of 50s-to-70s underground abortionist Harvey Karman (a name which, coincidentally, sounds exactly like something they'd invent for a fictional abortionist based on Gosnell if they ever wanted to do a CSI episode). "Much of Karman’s early history is hazy," the article reports, "but one horrific incident stands out. In 1955, one of the women who sought Karman’s help died of an infection, and he was charged with both murder and abortion. A court rejected his insistence that he was a mere middleman between the woman and a doctor, finding that he himself had tried to induce a miscarriage using a speculum and a nutcracker." (Horrifying indeed, but the article doesn't make it clear enough for my liking whether the term "horrific incident" refers to the woman's death or the two years Karman spent in jail for it. If the latter, I can't help remembering those CNN reports of the Steubenville rape case, which all but wept over the destruction of the rapists' rosy futures while ignoring the victim's plight entirely.)
However, you can't keep a good man down: in two years Karman "emerged unfazed to resume the work that had become, for him, a kind of crusade." He took up a few hobbies such as film studies and working with juvenile delinquents, but "abortion remained his consuming passion." (Most pro-choice people would have to take issue with the wording of this: very few people really like abortion, even those who see it as a necessity. Helping women ought to be a consuming passion; abortion is not an appropriate consuming passion for a sane individual.) Eventually, his passion led him to create the prototype manual vacuum aspiration syringe, and this development is reported on with cavalier good humor and a general spirit of fun. Karman, according to his friend Dr. Malcom Potts,"was a very dexterous person. He used to make model airplanes when he was young. I once locked myself out of my car, and I’d never seen anybody break into a car as quickly as Harvey did. And he’s pretty good at breaking into the uterus." At this point, of course, I'm flickering my eyes to the top of the page to make sure this is really Salon.com and not some sick satire website.
Over and over, the article casually admits that Karman, this man with a consuming passion for finding new ways to break into the uterus, might possibly have been a pretty shady figure, however lovable: "He added a Ph.D. to his name, though his degree came from a dubious Swiss diploma mill." Still, we're assured confidently that though "[w]ithout a doubt, there were abundant reasons to be suspicious of him ... he was no mercenary backroom butcher." I am reminded irresistibly of Mark Twain's In Defense of Harriet Shelley, in which Twain rips mercilessly into a contemporary Shelley biography that justified the poet's wrongdoings in broad terms: "The ordinary forms of speech are absent from it. All the pages, all the paragraphs, walk by sedately, elegantly, not to say mincingly, in their Sunday-best, shiny and sleek, perfumed, and with boutonnieres in their button-hole. It is rare even to find a chance sentence that has forgotten to dress."
How do we know that Karman was "no mercenary backroom butcher"? Because "many recall him as more interested in spreading word of his discovery than in profiting from it, giving free demonstrations to interested doctors and health care workers." In the first place, the possibility that spreading word of his discovery might lead to profit seems not to have occurred to the author of the article. But even if we should take the term "mercenary" out, even if we take it upon ourselves to judge on the word of this unnamed "many" that he was not after money, the rest of the phrase remains. No, he was no coy backroom butcher; he was a theatrical butcher, a stage butcher, eager to bring his brand of butchery to the public eye. Perhaps I'm being too broad in my assessment, but hearing his friend wax eloquent about his prophetic skill with model airplanes and his uncanny knack for breaking into cars has me worried. It's as if Dr. Potts were trying to shill his buddy as a Houdini, proud of his stunts and eager for an audience.
Keep in mind that this article was not written as a profile of Harvey Karman, inventor of the manual vacuum aspiration syringe. The article is called "How abortion changed the world." So why, why does this shadowy figure who happened to invent a popular abortion device but whom even the author of the article admits to have been more than a little sleazy receive top billing? Isn't there someone more admirable, perhaps someone more misguidedly geared toward the general goal of helping woman and less passionate about the act of abortion for its own sake, who might be appropriate? What on earth would make us, assuming we were entirely undecided about the issue, get behind this giddy gamer of a non-doctor who treats the womb like a rubic's cube to be accessed with nutcrackers and syringes? Well, the rest of the article will tell you, when it eventually gets to the subject of woman a good five paragraphs later. "[T]he global commitment to reproductive rights represents an important attempt to unite humankind against an ageless scourge: the wholesale devaluation of women."
I'm going to back up all the way to the beginning of the article and find the only Karman quote it contains, the abortionist's only word on the subject that the columnist finds worthy of note (since inventing the manual vacuum aspiration syringe mostly speaks for itself). "It seemed like every guy who got a girlfriend pregnant, everyone who had remotely heard about me, said, 'This guy knows about abortion,' " he told Ms. Magazine in 1975, referring to his days as a psychology student who, according to the article, "helped a number of desperate coeds find ways to terminate their pregnancy".
It's all about the guys, spiriting their girlfriends past the state lines for personal convenience, trusting their girlfriend's lives to the word of some unqualified student who they heard might know a thing or two. And the unqualified student, I might add, is quite proud of his early savvy on the subject, even in retrospect. I would elaborate on this aura of pride, but I'm remembering those little feet, floating in jars.
Still, though, no commentary on this piece would be complete without a mention of its final line, the last hammer-stroke to the nail that drives it home. It appears below, emphasis mine.
I hate to sound like a stereotype of this movement that I'm a part of which, in a better world, would not even be referred to as a "movement". But as long as Salon is going to write things like that without irony, I am going to reply without irony and with all my heart.
God help us.
The intertwined tyrannies of culture and biology.
The intertwined tyrannies of morality and reality.
The intertwined tyrannies of humanity and femininity.
The intertwined tyrannies of the soul and the body.
When a black freethinking man is murdered, it's not a crime against black freethinking men; it's a crime against humanity. When a white Jewish woman is murdered, it's not a crime against white Jewish women; it's a crime against humanity. When a baby, skin unseen, gender unknown, religion uncomprehended, is destroyed in the womb before its birth or snipped with a scissors outside the womb after its birth, it is not a crime against babies or fetuses or even women. It is a crime against humanity itself.
By trying to create a world where, contrary to nature, sex does not get a woman pregnant, we're trying to completely transcend humanity, like those people who say, "Let us build a tower that will go all the way to Heaven." Only at the moment we're striving, with all the scientific and mechanical complexity we're capable of, for something that's already been invented, for something so clever and compartmentalized that Karman could only have dreamed of inventing it, for something that can be accomplished with a swift turn of the knife: suicide, a neat device to dispose of the soul by throwing it away and the body by landing it underground. Then, free forever from the intertwined tyrannies of culture and biology, we'll be able to reap what remains.
The answer to that is "precious little".
Thursday, April 4, 2013
You're living in your own Private Idaho
Look at me, redirecting the chattering stream of Tumblr into the quiet harbor of my Blogger blog!
Here do I vow that I will never write anything on either blog just to get attention.
Here do I vow that I will never write anything on either blog just to get attention.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
So what if there's a child in the shed?
There are few things I love more than a good short story. In many ways, a short story is more difficult than a novel: it needs a tight plot, it doesn't get pages and pages to develop its characters. It doesn't have the luxury of being allowed to wind down on some sweet, light lullaby of phrasing; ideally it should deliver a punch on the last page powerful enough to deprive you of your wind. And Ursula Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" does exactly that.
Tiptoe away and read it before you keep going; I won't be the one to ruin the ending for you.
Back now? Well, I debated whether or not this was a wise post to write. In the first place, Ursula Le Guin is adamantly pro-choice, and I'd hate it if I were a published author and someone used one of my stories to support, say, abortion. But I still feel that when an author gets to the root of things in a story like this one, she can sometimes highlight the flaws even in her own thinking.
Borrowing an idea which dates back to the work of Dostoyevsky, Le Guin gives us, in gorgeous, glorious detail, a land without suffering. Its members are not naive; they are intelligent, impassioned. They are scholars and singers, artists and mothers. The more we delve into their society (with the author by our side, of course, like J.M. Barrie in Peter Pan), the more there doesn't seem to be a catch. Drugs are available, which bring "a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs", but they are "not habit-forming", and very few feel the need to take them. Love is free, but also free of negative consequence; "[o]ne thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt."
"A boundless and generous contentment," Le Guin writes, "a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer: this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life."
But wait, hang on a minute; in one tool shed, in one basement, there sits a child, seemingly suspended in agelessness (though hardly to its benefit), starving, awash in filth, utterly miserable, to whom no one is allowed to talk, though it occasionally cries for help (less and less often, as numbness enters its brain). It "has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice".
"They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weather of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery … If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. … The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child."
This is explained to all of the children of Omelas at some point, usually before they enter their teens. They react in the way one might expect: with shock, anger, tears. "But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. …Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it." They assimilate into society again; they vow to be better people, more compassionate. No one commits the treason of rescuing the child at the expense of thousands. "Now do you believe in them?" the author asks sadly. "Are they not more credible?"
My friends, we are living in a society today that is entirely dependent on the destruction of children; not in sheds, but in wombs. Because they were not easily seen, we were once told that they were not children at all. Like the young ones of Omelas we were blissful in our ignorance. But since sonogram images and scientific evidence don't match up with this idea, more and more abortionists, more and more who espouse the pro-choice cause, are admitting the truth. These are children, yes, but either they have to go or we do.
"Here's the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal," writes Salon author Mary Elizabeth Williams in the column "So what if abortion ends life?" "That's a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always."
If we overthrow abortion, Williams argues, there go our rights as women; the rights we've worked so hard for over the years. There goes Omelas, where actions carry no consequence. She takes it for granted that pro-lifers are "wingnuts", bullies, when they're the ones standing up for what she freely admits is the life of a child. It's not too surprising when you think about it; suppose some people invaded Omelas and announced their intention to storm the shed, to save the child. Would they not be labelled terrorists?
Let's put aside the question of whether this society of ours that allows the slaughter of its unborn is really the utopia we might have hoped, and ask ourselves: even if it were, even if our lives were utterly perfect and breathtakingly beautiful at the surface, would they be worth the price?
"We are not going back to the Dark Ages [when abortion was a crime]," Ursula Le Guin wrote in her 1982 essay The Princess. "…There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.”
When I read this quote, I see exactly what I see when I look at William's column: a defense of Omelas (which, after all, would seem to be a city of life and light) from the very woman who exposes it. I must beg of you; when you see that child huddled in that shed, do not try to justify it. Be like the people of the title, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Or better yet, stay. Stay and fight. Storm the shed, save the child.
Tiptoe away and read it before you keep going; I won't be the one to ruin the ending for you.
Back now? Well, I debated whether or not this was a wise post to write. In the first place, Ursula Le Guin is adamantly pro-choice, and I'd hate it if I were a published author and someone used one of my stories to support, say, abortion. But I still feel that when an author gets to the root of things in a story like this one, she can sometimes highlight the flaws even in her own thinking.
Borrowing an idea which dates back to the work of Dostoyevsky, Le Guin gives us, in gorgeous, glorious detail, a land without suffering. Its members are not naive; they are intelligent, impassioned. They are scholars and singers, artists and mothers. The more we delve into their society (with the author by our side, of course, like J.M. Barrie in Peter Pan), the more there doesn't seem to be a catch. Drugs are available, which bring "a great lightness and brilliance to the mind and limbs", but they are "not habit-forming", and very few feel the need to take them. Love is free, but also free of negative consequence; "[o]ne thing I know there is none of in Omelas is guilt."
"A boundless and generous contentment," Le Guin writes, "a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world's summer: this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life."
But wait, hang on a minute; in one tool shed, in one basement, there sits a child, seemingly suspended in agelessness (though hardly to its benefit), starving, awash in filth, utterly miserable, to whom no one is allowed to talk, though it occasionally cries for help (less and less often, as numbness enters its brain). It "has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice".
"They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weather of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery … If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. … The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child."
This is explained to all of the children of Omelas at some point, usually before they enter their teens. They react in the way one might expect: with shock, anger, tears. "But as time goes on they begin to realize that even if the child could be released, it would not get much good of its freedom: a little vague pleasure of warmth and food, no doubt, but little more. It is too degraded and imbecile to know any real joy. It has been afraid too long ever to be free of fear. …Their tears at the bitter injustice dry when they begin to perceive the terrible justice of reality, and to accept it." They assimilate into society again; they vow to be better people, more compassionate. No one commits the treason of rescuing the child at the expense of thousands. "Now do you believe in them?" the author asks sadly. "Are they not more credible?"
My friends, we are living in a society today that is entirely dependent on the destruction of children; not in sheds, but in wombs. Because they were not easily seen, we were once told that they were not children at all. Like the young ones of Omelas we were blissful in our ignorance. But since sonogram images and scientific evidence don't match up with this idea, more and more abortionists, more and more who espouse the pro-choice cause, are admitting the truth. These are children, yes, but either they have to go or we do.
"Here's the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal," writes Salon author Mary Elizabeth Williams in the column "So what if abortion ends life?" "That's a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always."
If we overthrow abortion, Williams argues, there go our rights as women; the rights we've worked so hard for over the years. There goes Omelas, where actions carry no consequence. She takes it for granted that pro-lifers are "wingnuts", bullies, when they're the ones standing up for what she freely admits is the life of a child. It's not too surprising when you think about it; suppose some people invaded Omelas and announced their intention to storm the shed, to save the child. Would they not be labelled terrorists?
Let's put aside the question of whether this society of ours that allows the slaughter of its unborn is really the utopia we might have hoped, and ask ourselves: even if it were, even if our lives were utterly perfect and breathtakingly beautiful at the surface, would they be worth the price?
"We are not going back to the Dark Ages [when abortion was a crime]," Ursula Le Guin wrote in her 1982 essay The Princess. "…There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.”
When I read this quote, I see exactly what I see when I look at William's column: a defense of Omelas (which, after all, would seem to be a city of life and light) from the very woman who exposes it. I must beg of you; when you see that child huddled in that shed, do not try to justify it. Be like the people of the title, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Or better yet, stay. Stay and fight. Storm the shed, save the child.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Current Reads: All You Need Is Blood
"Ringo, what are you up to?"
"Page 5."
- A Hard Day's Night
Inspired in part by the Simultaneous Reads blog over at Tumblr, I've decided to start posting a bit of what I'm reading. I believe that stacking up all the books a person is reading at the moment often tells a lot about his personal psychology.
...or at least, I used to believe that, until I realized I was reading three Beatle-themed books plus two tales of gore and childhood trauma.
Dear friends, I am not a gore person. Even watching that deliberately cheesy Shakespearean-themed thriller Theater of Blood (you know, with Vincent Price as an actor killing off his critics) set my teeth kinda on edge. It just sort of...fell out this way.
Technically I'm not even a nonfiction person, but random Beatles obsessions strike the best of us.
(And, fyi, I'd have three horror novels to balance out the Beatle books if Amazon hadn't suddenly raised the price on Blood Man.)
So, without further adieu!
John Lennon: A Biography by Jacqueline Edmonson
Possibly the most bare-bones Lennon bio on the market, this book was an electronic resource from my college library, presumably for kids with papers due in the morning. It's written in the style of Wikipedia, with all its vast understatements and iffy grammar, and I've already picked up several mistakes (no, Paul and Pete didn't get deported from Hamburg for accidentally knocking over a candle in a venue; I seem to recall that they started a fire on purpose, cheeky young thugs that they were), but I'm actually enjoying it for its comprehensiveness and lack of pretension, the latter of which makes it far brisker reading than, say, Larry Kane's Ticket to Ride.
Also, the author dedicated it to three kids, presumably hers, which reassured me that the text was written by a human being and didn't spontaneously generate.
The Longest Cocktail Party by Richard Di Lello
A fine example of what I'm pretty sure constitutes New Journalism, all about working at Apple Records toward the end of the 60's. Formatted in short dialogue-loaded chapters like sketches in The New Yorker, some black-and-white photo inserts. It's the kind of thing that could only have been published in the 70's. Like the liner notes in a 1960's vinyl, it's informative, conversational, amusing and often too clever by half.
Blackbird Fly by Lise McClendon
Okay, calling it "Beatle-themed" just because of the title is a stretch worthy of Rose Mary Woods, but it's a low-key, observant and, so far, quite beautiful work. A woman's emotionally distant workaholic of a husband dies, and she finds out he's left her a house in France that she didn't know he even owned, so naturally she goes to check it out. If you're thinking of The Shack or something I must tell you that this won't be on the "inspirational" shelf anytime soon; while far from heartless, it's refreshingly unsentimental. It's one of those books that's content simply to live and breathe, and breathe it does.
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
It's about time I cracked open a Gillian Flynn, and I must say I'm surprised. I was expecting a cerebral, poetic mystery in the vein of Tana French. It's more like a rusty razor in the vein of the reader. That's not to say it isn't witty and well-thought out, but good grief, the woman doesn't stray from messy murder and equally wince-worthy satire. So far we've got the surviving children of slaughtered families competing for donation money like a bunch of washed-up beauty pageant queens. No wonder Stephen King gave it a blurb. And speaking of Stephen...
The Shining by Stephen King
Despite the fact that his paperbacks are a staple at my local grocery store, I've never gotten into Stephen King, because any mystery of his worth reading has been spoiled for me by movies I haven't even seen. I mean, how am I supposed to take the foreshadowing in the first three chapters seriously when I've got this mental image of Jack Nicholson smashing through a door with an axe? Nice going, Hollywood.
"Page 5."
- A Hard Day's Night
Inspired in part by the Simultaneous Reads blog over at Tumblr, I've decided to start posting a bit of what I'm reading. I believe that stacking up all the books a person is reading at the moment often tells a lot about his personal psychology.
...or at least, I used to believe that, until I realized I was reading three Beatle-themed books plus two tales of gore and childhood trauma.
Dear friends, I am not a gore person. Even watching that deliberately cheesy Shakespearean-themed thriller Theater of Blood (you know, with Vincent Price as an actor killing off his critics) set my teeth kinda on edge. It just sort of...fell out this way.
Technically I'm not even a nonfiction person, but random Beatles obsessions strike the best of us.
(And, fyi, I'd have three horror novels to balance out the Beatle books if Amazon hadn't suddenly raised the price on Blood Man.)
So, without further adieu!
John Lennon: A Biography by Jacqueline Edmonson
Possibly the most bare-bones Lennon bio on the market, this book was an electronic resource from my college library, presumably for kids with papers due in the morning. It's written in the style of Wikipedia, with all its vast understatements and iffy grammar, and I've already picked up several mistakes (no, Paul and Pete didn't get deported from Hamburg for accidentally knocking over a candle in a venue; I seem to recall that they started a fire on purpose, cheeky young thugs that they were), but I'm actually enjoying it for its comprehensiveness and lack of pretension, the latter of which makes it far brisker reading than, say, Larry Kane's Ticket to Ride.
Also, the author dedicated it to three kids, presumably hers, which reassured me that the text was written by a human being and didn't spontaneously generate.
The Longest Cocktail Party by Richard Di Lello
A fine example of what I'm pretty sure constitutes New Journalism, all about working at Apple Records toward the end of the 60's. Formatted in short dialogue-loaded chapters like sketches in The New Yorker, some black-and-white photo inserts. It's the kind of thing that could only have been published in the 70's. Like the liner notes in a 1960's vinyl, it's informative, conversational, amusing and often too clever by half.
Blackbird Fly by Lise McClendon
Okay, calling it "Beatle-themed" just because of the title is a stretch worthy of Rose Mary Woods, but it's a low-key, observant and, so far, quite beautiful work. A woman's emotionally distant workaholic of a husband dies, and she finds out he's left her a house in France that she didn't know he even owned, so naturally she goes to check it out. If you're thinking of The Shack or something I must tell you that this won't be on the "inspirational" shelf anytime soon; while far from heartless, it's refreshingly unsentimental. It's one of those books that's content simply to live and breathe, and breathe it does.
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
It's about time I cracked open a Gillian Flynn, and I must say I'm surprised. I was expecting a cerebral, poetic mystery in the vein of Tana French. It's more like a rusty razor in the vein of the reader. That's not to say it isn't witty and well-thought out, but good grief, the woman doesn't stray from messy murder and equally wince-worthy satire. So far we've got the surviving children of slaughtered families competing for donation money like a bunch of washed-up beauty pageant queens. No wonder Stephen King gave it a blurb. And speaking of Stephen...
The Shining by Stephen King
Despite the fact that his paperbacks are a staple at my local grocery store, I've never gotten into Stephen King, because any mystery of his worth reading has been spoiled for me by movies I haven't even seen. I mean, how am I supposed to take the foreshadowing in the first three chapters seriously when I've got this mental image of Jack Nicholson smashing through a door with an axe? Nice going, Hollywood.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Review: Heretics by G.K. Chesterton
One of the rewarding things about reading Chesterton's work is watching him pick up the thread he began in one book and continue it in another--or in my case, since I read a few of the later ones first, winding the thread back and finding out what set it spinning in the first place. Orthodoxy has been my favorite for years upon years, and all this time I had no idea that he'd written it as a follow-up to Heretics, with a view towards expanding on a few ideas he had introduced therein--views which had not been elaborated on to the satisfaction of his critics.
(In this sense, Heretics serves the same role in Chesterton's nonfiction that The Napoleon of Notting Hill serves in his fiction--the starting point of a hundred ideas. The creative seeds that flew from the finished Notting Hill not only took root in Chesterton's own later works Manalive and The Man Who Was Thursday, but in George Orwell's 1984 and, more recently, in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.)
An early work cannot be elaborate if it is to set off later works--it is the business of the later works, such as Orthodoxy, to be elaborate. But, above all, an early work must be bold, and this one fairly crackles on the page. It doesn't get much bolder than fixing a book with a title like Heretics and then christening each chapter after a well-known author of the day. A good start, I call it, and Chesterton likely thought so too. Small question why it set the critics gnawing on his heels.
While it's pleasant to start the book familiar with the names Chesterton mentions--Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph McCabe and H.G. Wells among them--it is far from necessary. The chapters provide us with all the information we need on these writers and philosophers, including full quotations. Even better, Chesterton does not merely argue with them or critique them, but uses them as a starting point for his own rocketing, riotous thoughts, eventually exposing them, one after the other, to his topsy-turvy point of view, tipping them on their heads, shaking them, and seizing hold of the worthwhile things that fall out of their minds and trouser-pockets. It's a conceit Chesterton himself might have cherished; that of a robber who steals a man's coins, bites them to see which are counterfeit, and returns the rest to their owner--render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, after all.
One heretic, however, is noticeably missing from Chesterton's lineup, in much the same way Spider-Man is noticeably missing from The Avengers. I can't help but squint my eyes and look around for George Orwell. Now, I doubt that this was even Orwell's hour; my best guess is that he came a generation later, considering that Chesterton's fiction influenced his own writing. But right from the introduction, entitled "On the Importance of Orthodoxy", I could just feel him hovering on the outskirts of Heretics like the anarchist Lucian Gregory around the Council of Days in The Man Who Was Thursday, absent chapter after chapter yet waiting for his turn to speak. Gregory's nemesis, incidentally, is the hero of Thursday and goes by the strange name of Syme, and Orwell appropriated the name for a rather greasy side character in 1984, whether in rebuke of Chesterton or in tribute it is difficult to say. Orwell's Syme understands the schemes of the Party better than any other character, and yet the very Syme (as Chesterton's Syme might have said "in his most exquisite Cockney") is firmly enthusiastic about their application. "Orthodoxy," states Orwell's character with relish, "means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." Without saying a word--without even appearing--Orwell says, Chesterton, I beg the question.
And Chesterton answers it. He makes reply to that which has not been spoken. "But if there be such a thing as mental growth," he writes,
There you have it--Orwell turned on his head. Orthodoxy is consciousness. If you're still not convinced--as neither were Chesterton's critics--you can, and should, read Orthodoxy, for it was written with you in mind. But if you merely wish for more feats in the same vein, if you wish to see Chesterton shake famous men and still more famous ideals by the ankles, I can suggest no better stop than Heretics. Button your pockets.
(In this sense, Heretics serves the same role in Chesterton's nonfiction that The Napoleon of Notting Hill serves in his fiction--the starting point of a hundred ideas. The creative seeds that flew from the finished Notting Hill not only took root in Chesterton's own later works Manalive and The Man Who Was Thursday, but in George Orwell's 1984 and, more recently, in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.)
An early work cannot be elaborate if it is to set off later works--it is the business of the later works, such as Orthodoxy, to be elaborate. But, above all, an early work must be bold, and this one fairly crackles on the page. It doesn't get much bolder than fixing a book with a title like Heretics and then christening each chapter after a well-known author of the day. A good start, I call it, and Chesterton likely thought so too. Small question why it set the critics gnawing on his heels.
While it's pleasant to start the book familiar with the names Chesterton mentions--Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph McCabe and H.G. Wells among them--it is far from necessary. The chapters provide us with all the information we need on these writers and philosophers, including full quotations. Even better, Chesterton does not merely argue with them or critique them, but uses them as a starting point for his own rocketing, riotous thoughts, eventually exposing them, one after the other, to his topsy-turvy point of view, tipping them on their heads, shaking them, and seizing hold of the worthwhile things that fall out of their minds and trouser-pockets. It's a conceit Chesterton himself might have cherished; that of a robber who steals a man's coins, bites them to see which are counterfeit, and returns the rest to their owner--render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, after all.
One heretic, however, is noticeably missing from Chesterton's lineup, in much the same way Spider-Man is noticeably missing from The Avengers. I can't help but squint my eyes and look around for George Orwell. Now, I doubt that this was even Orwell's hour; my best guess is that he came a generation later, considering that Chesterton's fiction influenced his own writing. But right from the introduction, entitled "On the Importance of Orthodoxy", I could just feel him hovering on the outskirts of Heretics like the anarchist Lucian Gregory around the Council of Days in The Man Who Was Thursday, absent chapter after chapter yet waiting for his turn to speak. Gregory's nemesis, incidentally, is the hero of Thursday and goes by the strange name of Syme, and Orwell appropriated the name for a rather greasy side character in 1984, whether in rebuke of Chesterton or in tribute it is difficult to say. Orwell's Syme understands the schemes of the Party better than any other character, and yet the very Syme (as Chesterton's Syme might have said "in his most exquisite Cockney") is firmly enthusiastic about their application. "Orthodoxy," states Orwell's character with relish, "means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." Without saying a word--without even appearing--Orwell says, Chesterton, I beg the question.
And Chesterton answers it. He makes reply to that which has not been spoken. "But if there be such a thing as mental growth," he writes,
it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. … Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable of, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined skepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.
There you have it--Orwell turned on his head. Orthodoxy is consciousness. If you're still not convinced--as neither were Chesterton's critics--you can, and should, read Orthodoxy, for it was written with you in mind. But if you merely wish for more feats in the same vein, if you wish to see Chesterton shake famous men and still more famous ideals by the ankles, I can suggest no better stop than Heretics. Button your pockets.
Spoken in jest
I would like to announce that I finally gained an essential older sister skill: the ability to pretend not to know the punchlines of jokes that I actually learned years ago. I used to just whip out the punchline, thereby disappointing the six-year-old out of five minutes of joke-telling, but I'm older and wiser now.
Rebecca: How do you put an elephant in the refrigerator?
Me: (knowing perfectly well how you put an elephant in the refrigerator) I don't know, how?
Rebecca: (laughing so hard she doubles up like a jackknife) You open the refrigerator, you put the elephant in and you close the refrigerator!
This joke, by the way, has several sequels that rely on it. For example, How do you put a giraffe in the refrigerator? Here, the jokist is relying on the listener to say you open the refrigerator, put the giraffe in and close the refrigerator, so that's exactly what I said. Not so, impractical one. You open the refrigerator, take the elephant out, and only then will you have room for the giraffe.
There's another one, and another one after that. I don't care to transcribe them all, but suffice it to say that by the time she was done with those and had started out on another set, I felt as if I'd gone to a ghost-story session to humor the hosts and then realized that they were actually a Nordic tribe reciting the Prose Edda.
But actually, seeing her laugh made me laugh. And seeing me laugh made her laugh still more.
I think the secret to a good sisterly relationship in a large family is to encounter each other constantly, almost as if by accident, always parting on mutual good terms. I'm hoping that she hunted up Cecilia and is now learning more of my oldest jokes to bring to me.
I like to think that there's something deeply and elusively good about us human beings, that one of our natural instincts is to want to make other people laugh. Why is that? It's one of those touches of the divine in us, I guess.
Now, do you know any of these jokes? They're good ones. Go tell them to your sisters.
[By the way, the word jokist isn't in the dictionary, but I got it out of Krazy Kat, and if it was good enough for George Herriman it's good enough for me.]
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Bee-trayal
You should see me in my college library, going from book to book to book. Fluttering between the shelves like some kind of agitated butterfly. Very rarely do I check anything out; when I do it gathers dust in my room between assignments and cartoon binges, no matter how much I want to read it. I am easily distracted.
So it is with notebooks.
I must have three diaries in different places, all of them untouched for months, each guiltily alluding to the other like some lost love: I may have done wrong by him, but I'll do right by you. But my dear Arden blog, I thought we had something. We weren't like Mixed Moss; that was when I was young and foolish, it had seen its time. I had no other platform then, no facebook, no nothing; cheap you may be, but you are mine.
And all the time I knew I'd cave under the pressure to get a Tumblr; a high-tech thing with a prettier layout and a more than likely chance of comments and acknowledgement, little things we writers live for. You can't hit the "reblog" button here on Blogger. Nothing is ever that easy.
But I'm keeping you up, Arden, for longer thoughts. Don't mind if my attention wanders, goes from platform to platform,
like
bees.
So it is with notebooks.
I must have three diaries in different places, all of them untouched for months, each guiltily alluding to the other like some lost love: I may have done wrong by him, but I'll do right by you. But my dear Arden blog, I thought we had something. We weren't like Mixed Moss; that was when I was young and foolish, it had seen its time. I had no other platform then, no facebook, no nothing; cheap you may be, but you are mine.
And all the time I knew I'd cave under the pressure to get a Tumblr; a high-tech thing with a prettier layout and a more than likely chance of comments and acknowledgement, little things we writers live for. You can't hit the "reblog" button here on Blogger. Nothing is ever that easy.
But I'm keeping you up, Arden, for longer thoughts. Don't mind if my attention wanders, goes from platform to platform,
like
bees.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Out to Lent
By the time I return to regular posting, we'll have ourselves a new Pope. Think of that.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
I have one of those Tumblr things
I knew that I would, sooner or later.
It's such a crazy website--like a cool Bohemian sketchbook. But mine still has that dull wall-of-a-classroom look. I'll change that in the days to come, hopefully.
allieinarden.tumblr.com
It's such a crazy website--like a cool Bohemian sketchbook. But mine still has that dull wall-of-a-classroom look. I'll change that in the days to come, hopefully.
allieinarden.tumblr.com
Thursday, January 24, 2013
A poem
I found
a fairy skeleton--
its spine
no thicker than
the stem that ties
a clover
to the ground.
its sockets wide
enough to sow
a pair of poppy seeds,
its ribcage like two rows
of eyelashes
entwined.
a fairy skeleton--
its spine
no thicker than
the stem that ties
a clover
to the ground.
its sockets wide
enough to sow
a pair of poppy seeds,
its ribcage like two rows
of eyelashes
entwined.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
March for Life post 1
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb: and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: the calf and the lion, and the sheep shall abide together, and a little child shall lead them.The calf and the bear shall feed: their young ones shall rest together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp: and the weaned child shall thrust his hand into the den of the basilisk.They shall not hurt, nor shall they kill in all my holy mountain, for the earth is filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the covering waters of the sea.
- Isaiah 11:6-9
There's something about animals and kids. They go together. When I was little, almost every picture book that was meant to trick children into sleeping was about saying good-night to all the animals. We'd say good night to, oh, for example, the baby donkey and the baby crow, the puppies, the pigs, the lambs. Then, as a sort of grand finale, there'd be a young representative member of our species getting shied off to bed along with the lot.
Even the Bible juxtaposes children and animals. Look at the "peaceable kingdom" passage quoted above, which seems to find its fulfillment for a brief, short space in the narrative of the Nativity, when the savior of humanity bedded down in a stable for his first night on earth. When I was very little and my sister Clair was littler, she was discontented, I guess, with all the pre-existing Christmas carols, so she went and wrote her own: "The sheep and the donkey, the camel and the lamb / The cattle and doves are nice. / But Mary and Joseph put Jesus in a manger." Cattle and doves are nice, but a baby is nicer.
That picture jumped into my head, unreasonably, after I'd read a Salon article that my friend Joe Jablonski at Gaudium Dei linked to on his Facebook page. (He's about to write a post about it which will go into a lot more detail.) The article "So what if abortion ends life?" begins with the line, "Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word 'life.' " It then proceeds to explain, at some length, why we don't have a better word than "life". Pretty devilish clever of us to use the word we mean.
And here's the catch: Mary Elizabeth Williams, its author, was a Salon.com writer that I really liked, due to the fact that she had, in the past, showed a little human compassion towards the much-maligned Duggars, wondering aloud why they shouldn't grieve a miscarriage and even eloquently defending their decision to photograph their stillborn baby. In her article "Stop judging the Duggars", she asked, "So what if they're expecting again? A family of 20 is just another side of reproductive choice." Apparently, knowingly sanctioning the killing of human beings is the side we're accustomed to.
I'm not really sure whether to be relieved or terrified, reading the new article. Upside: we admit that children are being killed. Downside: we're fine with that.
"Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal," writes Williams. "That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always."
"All life is not equal." Think about that. Let those words stand against the arguments of those who say we don't need religion to be good. Religion says that human beings have souls, and without it, we suffer a level of detachment that leads us to rate human life in terms of convenience, because, really, are we any better than animals?
Don't read me wrong. I love animals. But if I'm going to see a scene with all the animals stopping and staring at something, I badly want it to be a man and a woman and a baby, not the words, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Three Songs
I've been on break. What if I wrote one post per day, no matter how short or no matter how lousy? What if I did that?
I tend to break down in mid-post-write, just as I might break down in writing any old thing. The other day, for instance, I decided to write down my "Top 5 songs at this moment in time", Tumblr-style, but I could only think of three.
1. Green Tambourine - The Lemon Pipers
My newfound appreciation for the 60s music scene got me into this fix. Now whenever I turn around, this odd little hippie song is playing in the back of my head, as if I've got some switch under the nape of my neck that sets it going. It probably helps that it reminds me so much of my own story, Gua Gua, and of my character Donovan Din, who's very much the "music-for-money" sort. And though I don't even know the name of the lead singer of The Lemon Pipers (now there's a Jeopardy answer if ever there was one), I've kind of fallen in love with his voice. He doesn't sound like all the other singers of the era, he doesn't really sound like anyone. He sounds like a sort of decent singer with a voice somewhere in the middle ranges who's experimenting with an echo machine and maybe even trying to imitate Woody Woodpecker.
Drop some silver in my tambour-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ine.
2. You Probably Get That A Lot - They Might Be Giants
I'm actually going to see TMBG in March, cementing my geek status once and for all. But even though they're esteemed as such, I'm actually tired of thinking of them as mere geeks. They're actually two freakishly innovative guys who allow themselves to casually do things with lyrics that no one else would be caught dead doing. As a random instance, this song here is a love song to a headless girl who's not like all the other headless girls ("Although millions of cephalophores are walking past my door / They're invisible to be except for one cephalophore"). The singer is charmed by her quirks--"the way [she] swing[s] her head"--as she carries it in her hands, naturally--and her habit of "melting down some army guys to make green tea". It may not carry quite the extreme level of charm as "Birdhouse In Your Soul"--which, in case you weren't aware, is about a nightlight serenading its young owner--but it comes close enough.
3. Love Me Do - The Beatles
I find this song hilarious. It was The Beatles' first single, and it's amazing to think that they debuted on the music scene with something so utterly innocuous, instead of the crazed foot-stomping sound of "I Saw Her Standing There" or the Ed Sullivan show-stopper "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", or...well, almost anything else they ever wrote. It's got these dorky, repetitive lyrics ("Love, love me do / You know I love you / I'll always be true / So pleeeeeeease...love me do-oo") and no Ringo drumming on the album version (you can tell it from the single because they give the poor schlep a tambourine to keep him from feeling too bad) and John Lennon wailing into a harmonica, and pretty much everyone except their producer thought that it was a terrible song. If it had come out a couple years ago, we'd Rickroll each other with it.
But here's the thing--it's got, as the Beatles themselves would say, that something. Maybe it's the harmony, maybe it's the singability, maybe it's even the harmonica. It's appealing. I keep returning to it. It's actually the perfect thing to release on a record, because a single is something that you have to keep revolving all day long because you don't have a record or a playlist or anything, and I could see myself spinning the single to death. If my dad ever gets iTunes working again so I can finally spend that $15 gift card I got from my theater company (thanks, Blackfriars!), the Please Please Me album will be mine, and I expect this song to be the top of my "Most Played" list.
I tend to break down in mid-post-write, just as I might break down in writing any old thing. The other day, for instance, I decided to write down my "Top 5 songs at this moment in time", Tumblr-style, but I could only think of three.
1. Green Tambourine - The Lemon Pipers
My newfound appreciation for the 60s music scene got me into this fix. Now whenever I turn around, this odd little hippie song is playing in the back of my head, as if I've got some switch under the nape of my neck that sets it going. It probably helps that it reminds me so much of my own story, Gua Gua, and of my character Donovan Din, who's very much the "music-for-money" sort. And though I don't even know the name of the lead singer of The Lemon Pipers (now there's a Jeopardy answer if ever there was one), I've kind of fallen in love with his voice. He doesn't sound like all the other singers of the era, he doesn't really sound like anyone. He sounds like a sort of decent singer with a voice somewhere in the middle ranges who's experimenting with an echo machine and maybe even trying to imitate Woody Woodpecker.
Drop some silver in my tambour-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ine.
2. You Probably Get That A Lot - They Might Be Giants
I'm actually going to see TMBG in March, cementing my geek status once and for all. But even though they're esteemed as such, I'm actually tired of thinking of them as mere geeks. They're actually two freakishly innovative guys who allow themselves to casually do things with lyrics that no one else would be caught dead doing. As a random instance, this song here is a love song to a headless girl who's not like all the other headless girls ("Although millions of cephalophores are walking past my door / They're invisible to be except for one cephalophore"). The singer is charmed by her quirks--"the way [she] swing[s] her head"--as she carries it in her hands, naturally--and her habit of "melting down some army guys to make green tea". It may not carry quite the extreme level of charm as "Birdhouse In Your Soul"--which, in case you weren't aware, is about a nightlight serenading its young owner--but it comes close enough.
3. Love Me Do - The Beatles
I find this song hilarious. It was The Beatles' first single, and it's amazing to think that they debuted on the music scene with something so utterly innocuous, instead of the crazed foot-stomping sound of "I Saw Her Standing There" or the Ed Sullivan show-stopper "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", or...well, almost anything else they ever wrote. It's got these dorky, repetitive lyrics ("Love, love me do / You know I love you / I'll always be true / So pleeeeeeease...love me do-oo") and no Ringo drumming on the album version (you can tell it from the single because they give the poor schlep a tambourine to keep him from feeling too bad) and John Lennon wailing into a harmonica, and pretty much everyone except their producer thought that it was a terrible song. If it had come out a couple years ago, we'd Rickroll each other with it.
But here's the thing--it's got, as the Beatles themselves would say, that something. Maybe it's the harmony, maybe it's the singability, maybe it's even the harmonica. It's appealing. I keep returning to it. It's actually the perfect thing to release on a record, because a single is something that you have to keep revolving all day long because you don't have a record or a playlist or anything, and I could see myself spinning the single to death. If my dad ever gets iTunes working again so I can finally spend that $15 gift card I got from my theater company (thanks, Blackfriars!), the Please Please Me album will be mine, and I expect this song to be the top of my "Most Played" list.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
I love cheerful folk
"What can you attribute a good nature to, I wonder. Do you think you’re born with it? I suppose you are."
P.G. Wodehouse, 1975
"I've always been more of an optimist than a pessimist--that's just how I was born. It came with the body."
Ringo Starr, 2012
P.G. Wodehouse, 1975
"I've always been more of an optimist than a pessimist--that's just how I was born. It came with the body."
Ringo Starr, 2012
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