I am not a great listmaker because my consumption of music or books or films is limited by my budget, and spare time, since no one has felt the need to contact me and ask that I become a member of their press team. Oh, I would love to go to SXSW, Coachella, Pitchfork, advance screenings, advance galley copies, et. al on any company's dime, but we find ourselves in an incredibly fucked up situation, and only Tao Lin and the system of public libraries is willing to support me in my pursuit of critical professionalism.
If I had to name the best books of 2009, I would be hard-pressed, but I would put Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned on that list.
For movies, I would include Inglorious Basterds and Up, but I haven't seen anything else that approaches greatness. I suppose The Hurt Locker, the last movie reviewed on this blog and also the only advance screening I attended, deserves an honorable mention.
But music, I had bought more than ten albums this year, I think, and so here are my top 10:
#10: Atlas Sound - Logos
I do not think this was as good as Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel but there were at least three amazing songs--"An Orchid," "Walkabout," and "Quick Canal"--and that's good enough for me. And it's not like "Attic Lights" or the title track or "Washington School" are weak either. Overall, further proof that Bradford Cox is the most consistently great musical artist of the late aughts.
#9: Deerhunter - Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP
There were only five songs, but three of them--the title track, "Disappearing Ink," and "Circulation"--okay I don't want to repeat the previous entry. I put this above Atlas Sound because I prefer Deerhunter--they are louder, and they are tighter.
#8: Superchunk - Leaves in the Gutter EP
Criminally overlooked, as often happens to Superchunk. Though there are only five songs, and one of them is an acoustic version of another, further proof that Mac McCaughan is the most consistently great musical artist of the 1990's, and the aughts...that is, if you like their sound, which okay, not everyone wants energetic alternative pop-punk all the time, but I do. "Misfits & Mistakes" is as good as any other Superchunk song over the last twenty years. And this EP is so much better than Here's to Shutting Up that I had to include it. I really hope they do a full-length in 2010, and a proper full-scale tour. I like Portastatic, but it's not quite the same.
#7: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - S/T
I really don't think this is all that great, but it delivers on the hype, I think (in a way that the xx does not, for me). "Young Adult Friction" is a cool song. There are a few other good tracks, and a couple that are a bit annoying. But the sound is pure MBV, and while K. Shields & Co. may continue to dangle the promise of a new record--"it's a poor substitute at best," but it's good enough for now.
#6: Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Every year that Sonic Youth puts out a new album I will always put it in the top 10. And I do not think I am being unfair. This is one of their most fucked up records in recent years. It's so weird, and funny, and heavy, and accessible. Better than Rather Ripped, better than Sonic Nurse--on the basis of the first two tracks alone. Not that the rest of the album is any less inspiring.
#5: Jemina Pearl - Break it Up
Truthfully, this belongs closer to #10, as it wore me down after a couple weeks, but for those couple of weeks, it was the only thing I listened to. An incredibly consistent album--and probably better than the Be Your Own Pet swan song Get Awkward. The second half of this album is amazing. The first half is not too bad either. I would list all the great songs but it would be pointless because I would just list every song on the album, except for maybe two or three that grate on me a bit. Jemina can be a little annoying at times, but that is also what makes her great.
#4: Morrissey - Years of Refusal/Wavves - S/T (tie)
Two albums I bought on the same day back a long time ago at the beginning of 2009. The Morrissey was more immediately satisfying, but I rank it alongside Wavves because Wavves has the potential to be pretty awesome down the line. Morrissey turned 50 this year and continues to satisfy me by not backing down from his position that it is okay to be miserable and alone and sing songs about how horrible a serious adult existence can be--a true original, and one of the very few who has not lost the power he once wielded, some twenty-seven years on. Wavves turned 23 this year and satisfied me by singing songs about smoking pot and feeling bored and various fun things to do in California--like, I wish I had this album on a boombox, could go to a beach in SoCal, could light up a J, and then go for a swim, while getting a good tan. It may be fantasy, but Wavves proves that the dream of turning from nobody into the next big thing is still possible, and having much publicized festival meltdowns tends to help this cause.
#3: Girls - Album
Probably just on the basis of "Lust for Life," "Big Bad Mean Motherfucker," and "Morning Light." Those three songs are so awesome. I just think Girls are the most interesting new band to make their debut in 2009. The fact that they seem really messed up emotionally, but are also strangely wholesome, and sincere, is a combination that worked out very well for them on this album.
#2: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz
Now we get to the heavy hitters. Initially, I didn't see what was so great about this album. I loved "Zero," but I was like, "Why is the rest of this so somber? Why will you not kick the shit out of everyone, Karen O? This will not be fun to see live! Who cares?!" As time passed, and more listens gradually occurred, I realized this album is a masterpiece. Think "Maps" over and over, in various permutations.
#1: Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Once again, when I rated Sound of Silver the #1 album of 2007, I sided with the bandwagon jumpers, and now here, I will do the same with AC. I've been listening to them since Feels, and didn't really see what was so great about them. Strawberry Jam has proven to be an album that has really grown on me. But this album, which is now over a year old, is their first undisputed masterpiece. I never understood the appeal of AC until I gave this album a chance. This led me to recently purchase the Fall Be Kind EP, which does have one song that approaches the heights this album reaches, but overall, almost nothing can top this album. Okay so a couple places said Kid A was the album of the decade (after OK Computer was the album of the previous decade, or else Nevermind or Loveless)--and don't get me wrong, I love Radiohead as much as the next guy, but this album is so good it should have been hailed as the album of the decade. Kid A may have been gloomy, and portentous of things to come in American and global society (9/11, Bush, Iraq, Economic Hell)--but on the other end of the spectrum we have an album about leaving one's body for a night, forgetting everything awful about life and society at large, and just finding a little space where happiness can exist, if only for forty or forty-five minutes. Plus I didn't like Kid A as much as everyone else. So, all hail Animal Collective as the next Radiohead, even though it seems doubtful they will ever reach that degree of commercial popularity.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
The Original of Laura - Vladimir Nabokov
If The Original of Laura were as great as Knopf would like everyone to believe, then I would have read about it before last September, or October, or whenever, when I read that Wall Street Journal article about "Ghost Writers" and new books by Kurt Vonnegut, Nabokov, and Ralph Ellison.
I love Nabokov; I am one of his biggest fans. But it was a mistake to read The Original of Laura before the majority of his other work. Oh, I have tackled Lolita three times, Pale Fire once, Speak, Memory once, Bend Sinister twice, Laughter in the Dark once, Despair once, Pnin once, and several of his short stories out of the sixty-five in the collection I have of his--but Ada looms as the final masterpiece that I have yet to digest--and it will be soon.
But still, even with Ada sitting on my shelf, there are so many others remaining: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Invitation to a Beheading, The Defense (which seems boring--if it is about chess...), The Eye, Look at the Harlequins!, King, Queen, Knave, Transparent Things, and I am probably forgetting one or two others. I bet all of these are far superior to Laura, and yet it is Laura which will receive far more attention than anything he has done since Lolita.
Why is Laura such a hot topic? Well, it's the myth surrounding it, but let me clear something up, probably the only time I feel like I am being a good samaritan since my review of the Times New Viking album back when this blog started--this is more of an arts and crafts/board game "Let's Play Author!" than a real novel. When I checked it out from the library, I was like, whoa, that's thick. Some 270 pages, not a slight novel in the least--but there is all that talk about index cards, and how there are only 120 or so, and that comprises all of the text....
Okay, so the edition is beautiful, credit where credit is due. It goes for $35.00 and I would be shocked if they print this in paperback. It's the index cards that represent the majority of the publishing costs--they are lovingly re-created, and anyone interested in Nabokov's handwriting will love it.
But it was one of the most bizarre reading experiences of my life--every two pages would not contain even a whole paragraph. As if this weren't annoying enough, almost half the time, the next index card poses no resemblance to the previous one, which means the story has almost zero continuity.
Well, here is the myth that surrounds this volume and accounts for its popularity--Nabokov revivalism. Probably around the 30th anniversary of his death, his son Dmitri must have decided that it would be a good time to put a different sort of book into the marketplace. Basically, Vladimir was working on this at the time of his death, and he told his wife to burn the index cards if he never completed it. Well, she didn't, and years later, Dmitri decided it should be published, despite intimations from the man himself that the work was not up to code.
Dmitri's introduction to the volume is probably the best thing about it, because you get about five or six pages of memories of Vladimir, as he neared death, and it is quite alluring, for example, to read about how he once collapsed while hunting for butterflies, and his cries for help were laughed at by passerby. But Dmitri compares himself to Max Brod, publishing Metamorphosis and The Trial after Kafka's death, though Kafka instructed him to burn them. The Original of Laura is not Metamorphosis. No. Fucking. Way.
What is Laura about? Well, it seems to me to be a highly self-conscious (which makes it seem interesting for Nabokov lovers, but really it's not so much) meditation on being a novelist in love who has published a thinly-veiled story about a girl named Flora titled Laura--the novelist Philip Wild's wife--and Wild is dying, and while in the hospital, he methodically imagines each of his bodily appendages and organs being removed, which becomes a kind of ecstasy to him. That is it.
Now, some passages are pretty good, but they are never attached to anything else to make them stand out as "great." This is not a great novel, or even a good novel, or even a bad novel. It is not a novel. It is supposedly "a novel in fragments," and in the introduction Dmitri states that "despite its incompleteness, was unprecedented in structure and style," (xvii) and maybe I'm not reading closely enough, but it hardly seems like Nabokov intended for so many of these index cards to abruptly cut and move on to something completely unrelated.
If Nabokov had lived another year or so, Laura might have germinated into something truly wondrous, a volume that could fit alongside his absolute best work. It is true that the basic story could have been a winner. But I am sorry, I feel bad saying this because I want to like this book, and I like Dmitri--his writing style is clever enough as it is--but I really feel that Vladimir's wishes should have been respected.
Take out the index cards, shuffle them as the author probably did, read them aloud at a dinner party, and laugh about how "dying is fun." But don't expect to read a real novel. Here's looking forward to Ada, and another entry in the "most difficult books to read reviewed on Flying Houses" category.
I love Nabokov; I am one of his biggest fans. But it was a mistake to read The Original of Laura before the majority of his other work. Oh, I have tackled Lolita three times, Pale Fire once, Speak, Memory once, Bend Sinister twice, Laughter in the Dark once, Despair once, Pnin once, and several of his short stories out of the sixty-five in the collection I have of his--but Ada looms as the final masterpiece that I have yet to digest--and it will be soon.
But still, even with Ada sitting on my shelf, there are so many others remaining: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Invitation to a Beheading, The Defense (which seems boring--if it is about chess...), The Eye, Look at the Harlequins!, King, Queen, Knave, Transparent Things, and I am probably forgetting one or two others. I bet all of these are far superior to Laura, and yet it is Laura which will receive far more attention than anything he has done since Lolita.
Why is Laura such a hot topic? Well, it's the myth surrounding it, but let me clear something up, probably the only time I feel like I am being a good samaritan since my review of the Times New Viking album back when this blog started--this is more of an arts and crafts/board game "Let's Play Author!" than a real novel. When I checked it out from the library, I was like, whoa, that's thick. Some 270 pages, not a slight novel in the least--but there is all that talk about index cards, and how there are only 120 or so, and that comprises all of the text....
Okay, so the edition is beautiful, credit where credit is due. It goes for $35.00 and I would be shocked if they print this in paperback. It's the index cards that represent the majority of the publishing costs--they are lovingly re-created, and anyone interested in Nabokov's handwriting will love it.
But it was one of the most bizarre reading experiences of my life--every two pages would not contain even a whole paragraph. As if this weren't annoying enough, almost half the time, the next index card poses no resemblance to the previous one, which means the story has almost zero continuity.
Well, here is the myth that surrounds this volume and accounts for its popularity--Nabokov revivalism. Probably around the 30th anniversary of his death, his son Dmitri must have decided that it would be a good time to put a different sort of book into the marketplace. Basically, Vladimir was working on this at the time of his death, and he told his wife to burn the index cards if he never completed it. Well, she didn't, and years later, Dmitri decided it should be published, despite intimations from the man himself that the work was not up to code.
Dmitri's introduction to the volume is probably the best thing about it, because you get about five or six pages of memories of Vladimir, as he neared death, and it is quite alluring, for example, to read about how he once collapsed while hunting for butterflies, and his cries for help were laughed at by passerby. But Dmitri compares himself to Max Brod, publishing Metamorphosis and The Trial after Kafka's death, though Kafka instructed him to burn them. The Original of Laura is not Metamorphosis. No. Fucking. Way.
What is Laura about? Well, it seems to me to be a highly self-conscious (which makes it seem interesting for Nabokov lovers, but really it's not so much) meditation on being a novelist in love who has published a thinly-veiled story about a girl named Flora titled Laura--the novelist Philip Wild's wife--and Wild is dying, and while in the hospital, he methodically imagines each of his bodily appendages and organs being removed, which becomes a kind of ecstasy to him. That is it.
Now, some passages are pretty good, but they are never attached to anything else to make them stand out as "great." This is not a great novel, or even a good novel, or even a bad novel. It is not a novel. It is supposedly "a novel in fragments," and in the introduction Dmitri states that "despite its incompleteness, was unprecedented in structure and style," (xvii) and maybe I'm not reading closely enough, but it hardly seems like Nabokov intended for so many of these index cards to abruptly cut and move on to something completely unrelated.
If Nabokov had lived another year or so, Laura might have germinated into something truly wondrous, a volume that could fit alongside his absolute best work. It is true that the basic story could have been a winner. But I am sorry, I feel bad saying this because I want to like this book, and I like Dmitri--his writing style is clever enough as it is--but I really feel that Vladimir's wishes should have been respected.
Take out the index cards, shuffle them as the author probably did, read them aloud at a dinner party, and laugh about how "dying is fun." But don't expect to read a real novel. Here's looking forward to Ada, and another entry in the "most difficult books to read reviewed on Flying Houses" category.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Justyn with a Y - Swans(ong)
Ah the life of the struggling artist, forced to seek gainful employment outside his chosen field of play. Do we writers know the bitter sting of rejection any better than musicians? We are always asked by our friends and relatives--"are you still writing?" "Are you still playing music?" It seems inevitable. No one wants to ignore a person's dreams, even when they realize those dreams are improbable. We all want to believe that you can do what you love and make something out of yourself at the same time.
Does anyone know how hard it is to work on something in private, perfect it as you see fit, give it a proper professional sheen, and send it to the appropriate people who will then judge it as they see fit, while hoping they will offer you some kind of publishing deal, some kind of record deal, which will finally allow you to live your life the way you have always wanted to, going into your predetermined space and playing around with your instruments until you come up with something cogent, some statement, some piece of art which is meant to---? Excite, inspire, assuage, or comfort? Does anyone know how hard it is to then go around in person and present this material to the masses--which amount to barflys and cocktail waitresses--and try to keep a positive attitude? Does anyone know how hard it is to make money back on your investment when your chosen item of trade is presented by a complete unknown, and has questionable merits?
That is not to say that Justyn with a Y's debut album Swans(ong) has questionable merits musically, but for me, I generally feel that folk music has questionable merits. I don't understand it. I've never gotten into Bob Dylan. Justyn gave me a Townes van Zandt record and I liked that okay. There was only one time I listened to it and it felt appropriate--when I was driving my car into the city recently, to go to a jazz concert that I knew I was going to be late to, not really wanting to go at all, just feeling depressed in pretty much every way--and the album worked wonders. And I understand why Our Mother the Mountain is a great album.
Justyn has played in three bands since I have known him: Hog Hug, Phosphates, and Para Para Parasol. Justyn with a Y is the title of his solo project, and his first album Swans(ong) easily eclipses the entirety of his recorded output with any of those three previous bands--but I say that with a caveat--the caveat being that I liked the musical stylings of those previous bands better.
Okay, so Hog Hug never really set the world on fire, but I saw them play a couple times and I liked the song "Bar" and I have a bootleg of one of their concerts on my iPod and they play an interesting cover of the Beat Happening song "Tiger Trap." The Phosphates were my band, so to speak, and when one member left, Justyn filled in, and thus began the final tumultuous months of that band, which contained some of their best music and most troublesome feuds. I may be biased but I feel that the Phosphates were a supergroup of sorts and it is sad that they did not make it the way I envisioned. Para Para Parasol was a step in the right direction for Justyn, and their album is totally decent. I liked it just fine. I liked the sound, but they weren't exactly going to set the world on fire either.
Swans(ong) is not going to set the world on fire either. But this is Justyn's best work yet. It was recorded in a forest in Maryland in August 2009. It starts off uncertainly with "Slowing Me Down" which is sprightly enough but perhaps has some questionable lyrics. When the line "You know that my time is a precious thing to me/I can't spend it all making love to a memory" keeps coming up I can't stop thinking about masturbation, sorry. "Jason Moran" is the second song and takes things in a slightly weirder direction. I do not know who Jason Moran is but I feel compelled to google him or wikipedia him. Justyn reveals himself to be a bit more of a craftsman with this song, since it is somewhat more complex and probably shouldn't work, but does to a certain extent.
There are 9 songs on this album and of those, about four work really well. A couple of them are probably disposable, and another couple of them are totally decent. I think it is worth noting that Justyn did everything on his own with guitar on this album, no drums, nothing else but the ambient sounds of nature in the background. And to me, that ambience is the strongest part about the whole album. I felt that it could have been played up and used to a far more powerful effect. As it is, you hear a little bit, for about a second, at the very beginning, a little bit in between songs, and then at the very end for a couple seconds. The ambient nature sounds complement the nature of the material--and it could have been really cool, like a Microphones record, but instead it ends up sounding like a demo tape with slightly more to it.
"Shoelace Necklace" is the first song to be totally pleasant, but sounds like it could fit easily on one of those early Sebadoh cassette recordings. It is nice, but it is not especially a major statement. "Coastal Highway" comes next, and is the first truly great song on the album. Justyn is definitely branching out a bit from his comfort zone on this one, and it pays off. For some reason it reminds me of Neil Young--probably just the way the singing sounds. The song delves into a guitar hook that sounds like something off of Psychic Hearts. But in a folk way. This is my primary criticism--the material would sound much better with a full band, a punk/noise band. But "Coastal Highway" would not be magnified by a full group. It is at full strength the way it is.
"Direction is Round" is another song that works on the album, though not to the degree of "Coastal Highway"--more like to the degree of "Shoelace Necklace." My other basic complaint about this album is the production--yes, the nature setting is nice, but underused. But this is what separates amateurs from professionals. You can always tell the difference between your friend's band and say, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or even Wavves, bands that supposedly break out while doing everything D.I.Y. Guided by Voices are probably the only band that really did sound "lo-fi" and unpolished when first noticed. Production is unimportant, it seems, when people like Beck or Lou Barlow can record their own album on a four-track and be totally great. But no one would really listen to those recordings if they hadn't already heard the more "hi-fi" stuff--You're Living All Over Me or Odelay. If I am supposedly drawing comparisons to Justyn then it is inutile as the French might say.
"L#A#N#D" is probably the most notable song on the album, and is either the most annoying or most enjoyable thing on the album. I think it is nice, and simple, and well-constructed. I don't really understand the lyrics but it seems like they might be about Christianity. "Even if Your Road Leads Down" is a bit different, and definitely works--certainly darker than anything on the album up to this point. And perhaps makes me think about art, and failure. When I saw the artwork for the album, I told Justyn it was very "confrontational." And he asked in what sense, and I said, "In the sense that, with the title 'Swan Song,' you're leading people to believe that it's the last thing you'll do musically. But the spray paint across the 'ong' is like saying, 'No, I'm not ready to quit yet.'"
"Lorraine" makes me think of a more clever and less listenable song by Ozma about a character from the Back to the Future movies, and as it is, it is totally decent, but doesn't leave much of an impression. That is not the case for the final track, "When the Tension's Gone," which sounds a bit like Pavement to me, and is arguably the best single song just Justyn has ever recorded. That it is quiet and mournful is a shame for the modern rock radio stations of today that could play Justyn's much buzzed-about new single...It is the perfect way to cap off the album as it is. Yes, it reminds me of "Here."
There's not much more I could say that I haven't already intimated. Yes, this is Justyn's best work yet, and he has good reason to be proud of it, but it's not really the type of music I usually like (folk) and I don't think many people are going to be able to get into it. I think people need a reason to like their bands--i.e. they are not usually very good reasons. Like, people like Lady Gaga because she is catchy and cool, or people like Animal Collective because they are "music for intellectuals," or something, and people like Deerhunter or Girls because they are provocative, and people like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart because they are the closest equivalent of My Bloody Valentine, or people like Jack Johnson because he reminds them of just kicking back with friends, smoking a j, having a beer, and talking about what is good in life, or people like New Order because they are an awesome band for the dance element, or people like Weezer because they have a crush on Rivers Cuomo. The reason people would like Justyn with a Y is because it would be music to put on a mixtape for the person you have a crush on. But it is too difficult to be that kind of music. It is original, and it could only be made by Justyn, and I do not think it is going to open the door to an especially lucrative career in music, but it is his most accomplished work to date, and something that, if he could build upon it, might find a way to attract a larger body of listeners.
Does anyone know how hard it is to work on something in private, perfect it as you see fit, give it a proper professional sheen, and send it to the appropriate people who will then judge it as they see fit, while hoping they will offer you some kind of publishing deal, some kind of record deal, which will finally allow you to live your life the way you have always wanted to, going into your predetermined space and playing around with your instruments until you come up with something cogent, some statement, some piece of art which is meant to---? Excite, inspire, assuage, or comfort? Does anyone know how hard it is to then go around in person and present this material to the masses--which amount to barflys and cocktail waitresses--and try to keep a positive attitude? Does anyone know how hard it is to make money back on your investment when your chosen item of trade is presented by a complete unknown, and has questionable merits?
That is not to say that Justyn with a Y's debut album Swans(ong) has questionable merits musically, but for me, I generally feel that folk music has questionable merits. I don't understand it. I've never gotten into Bob Dylan. Justyn gave me a Townes van Zandt record and I liked that okay. There was only one time I listened to it and it felt appropriate--when I was driving my car into the city recently, to go to a jazz concert that I knew I was going to be late to, not really wanting to go at all, just feeling depressed in pretty much every way--and the album worked wonders. And I understand why Our Mother the Mountain is a great album.
Justyn has played in three bands since I have known him: Hog Hug, Phosphates, and Para Para Parasol. Justyn with a Y is the title of his solo project, and his first album Swans(ong) easily eclipses the entirety of his recorded output with any of those three previous bands--but I say that with a caveat--the caveat being that I liked the musical stylings of those previous bands better.
Okay, so Hog Hug never really set the world on fire, but I saw them play a couple times and I liked the song "Bar" and I have a bootleg of one of their concerts on my iPod and they play an interesting cover of the Beat Happening song "Tiger Trap." The Phosphates were my band, so to speak, and when one member left, Justyn filled in, and thus began the final tumultuous months of that band, which contained some of their best music and most troublesome feuds. I may be biased but I feel that the Phosphates were a supergroup of sorts and it is sad that they did not make it the way I envisioned. Para Para Parasol was a step in the right direction for Justyn, and their album is totally decent. I liked it just fine. I liked the sound, but they weren't exactly going to set the world on fire either.
Swans(ong) is not going to set the world on fire either. But this is Justyn's best work yet. It was recorded in a forest in Maryland in August 2009. It starts off uncertainly with "Slowing Me Down" which is sprightly enough but perhaps has some questionable lyrics. When the line "You know that my time is a precious thing to me/I can't spend it all making love to a memory" keeps coming up I can't stop thinking about masturbation, sorry. "Jason Moran" is the second song and takes things in a slightly weirder direction. I do not know who Jason Moran is but I feel compelled to google him or wikipedia him. Justyn reveals himself to be a bit more of a craftsman with this song, since it is somewhat more complex and probably shouldn't work, but does to a certain extent.
There are 9 songs on this album and of those, about four work really well. A couple of them are probably disposable, and another couple of them are totally decent. I think it is worth noting that Justyn did everything on his own with guitar on this album, no drums, nothing else but the ambient sounds of nature in the background. And to me, that ambience is the strongest part about the whole album. I felt that it could have been played up and used to a far more powerful effect. As it is, you hear a little bit, for about a second, at the very beginning, a little bit in between songs, and then at the very end for a couple seconds. The ambient nature sounds complement the nature of the material--and it could have been really cool, like a Microphones record, but instead it ends up sounding like a demo tape with slightly more to it.
"Shoelace Necklace" is the first song to be totally pleasant, but sounds like it could fit easily on one of those early Sebadoh cassette recordings. It is nice, but it is not especially a major statement. "Coastal Highway" comes next, and is the first truly great song on the album. Justyn is definitely branching out a bit from his comfort zone on this one, and it pays off. For some reason it reminds me of Neil Young--probably just the way the singing sounds. The song delves into a guitar hook that sounds like something off of Psychic Hearts. But in a folk way. This is my primary criticism--the material would sound much better with a full band, a punk/noise band. But "Coastal Highway" would not be magnified by a full group. It is at full strength the way it is.
"Direction is Round" is another song that works on the album, though not to the degree of "Coastal Highway"--more like to the degree of "Shoelace Necklace." My other basic complaint about this album is the production--yes, the nature setting is nice, but underused. But this is what separates amateurs from professionals. You can always tell the difference between your friend's band and say, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or even Wavves, bands that supposedly break out while doing everything D.I.Y. Guided by Voices are probably the only band that really did sound "lo-fi" and unpolished when first noticed. Production is unimportant, it seems, when people like Beck or Lou Barlow can record their own album on a four-track and be totally great. But no one would really listen to those recordings if they hadn't already heard the more "hi-fi" stuff--You're Living All Over Me or Odelay. If I am supposedly drawing comparisons to Justyn then it is inutile as the French might say.
"L#A#N#D" is probably the most notable song on the album, and is either the most annoying or most enjoyable thing on the album. I think it is nice, and simple, and well-constructed. I don't really understand the lyrics but it seems like they might be about Christianity. "Even if Your Road Leads Down" is a bit different, and definitely works--certainly darker than anything on the album up to this point. And perhaps makes me think about art, and failure. When I saw the artwork for the album, I told Justyn it was very "confrontational." And he asked in what sense, and I said, "In the sense that, with the title 'Swan Song,' you're leading people to believe that it's the last thing you'll do musically. But the spray paint across the 'ong' is like saying, 'No, I'm not ready to quit yet.'"
"Lorraine" makes me think of a more clever and less listenable song by Ozma about a character from the Back to the Future movies, and as it is, it is totally decent, but doesn't leave much of an impression. That is not the case for the final track, "When the Tension's Gone," which sounds a bit like Pavement to me, and is arguably the best single song just Justyn has ever recorded. That it is quiet and mournful is a shame for the modern rock radio stations of today that could play Justyn's much buzzed-about new single...It is the perfect way to cap off the album as it is. Yes, it reminds me of "Here."
There's not much more I could say that I haven't already intimated. Yes, this is Justyn's best work yet, and he has good reason to be proud of it, but it's not really the type of music I usually like (folk) and I don't think many people are going to be able to get into it. I think people need a reason to like their bands--i.e. they are not usually very good reasons. Like, people like Lady Gaga because she is catchy and cool, or people like Animal Collective because they are "music for intellectuals," or something, and people like Deerhunter or Girls because they are provocative, and people like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart because they are the closest equivalent of My Bloody Valentine, or people like Jack Johnson because he reminds them of just kicking back with friends, smoking a j, having a beer, and talking about what is good in life, or people like New Order because they are an awesome band for the dance element, or people like Weezer because they have a crush on Rivers Cuomo. The reason people would like Justyn with a Y is because it would be music to put on a mixtape for the person you have a crush on. But it is too difficult to be that kind of music. It is original, and it could only be made by Justyn, and I do not think it is going to open the door to an especially lucrative career in music, but it is his most accomplished work to date, and something that, if he could build upon it, might find a way to attract a larger body of listeners.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Ugly Man - Dennis Cooper
Ah, finally Dennis Cooper came out with a new book. I never read The Sluts because the cover looked too gay to me. Maybe it is good, I don't know. But I've read everything else by him, and Ugly Man is average in comparison with the rest. It is certainly different. It's definitely far more comic than anything else he has ever put out.
The closest reference point for this book would be Wrong, his collection of short stories published in 1992. Since that year, his star has grown bright, and he is probably more popular than ever before, thanks in no small part to his blog. I first read Try in 2003, followed quickly by Guide, then later My Loose Thread, Frisk, and Closer. For a while I didn't read anything by him, convinced the rest was not necessarily worth it--but God Jr. came out relatively recently, and that was interesting to see a different side of the writer. Finally while in L.A., I capped things off with Period and Wrong, later re-reading Try, which is the only other book by him reviewed on this blog http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/05/try-dennis-cooper.html. Now I want to read Guide again because I look back upon the part of his oeuvre that I have read, and I feel compelled to rank it in this order:
1) Try
2) Frisk
3) My Loose Thread
4) Guide
5) Closer
6) God Jr.
7) Ugly Man
8) Wrong
9) Period
And if you were to include Userlands, his anthology of online literature (the impetus for this blog, and its 12th post, http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/userlands-new-fiction-writers-from.html), it would rank beneath Period, probably. I could discuss them all, but let's keep things on Ugly Man, because there is a lot to discuss. Basically, I think it is better than Wrong, while still being very similar, because of the strength of a few of its pieces that go beyond 70% of the rest of the material--in particular, "Jerk," "The Worst (1960-1971)," and the powerful, closing "The Ash Gray Proclamation." Mostly it consists of really short pieces, varying in length from one paragraph to three pages. Flash fiction, I guess.
Sometimes the really short pieces work ("The Boy on the Far Left," "Graduate Seminar," and "Brian aka 'Bear'") and other times they just bleed into each other and seem pretty pointless. "Knife/Tape/Rope" is pretty decent as far as the other pieces that avoid categorization--or rather, fit neatly into the preconceptions of what a short story should appear to be. "The Hostage Drama" is another example of something that works in the end.
But pretty much everything else winds up sounding like an echo of Wrong--and what went wrong with it, pardon the pun. Which is that, forced to work within the confines of a smaller piece, much of Cooper's work loses its emotional impact and instead more closely approaches "torture porn," as with the shorter pieces the torture and the porn are introduced rather quickly, and violently, abruptly cut off. The plot is practically the same for every single one of these pieces--sexually confused teenage boy wants to die, and he happens to find friends that get off by murdering and raping him at the same time, and then sometimes the story will shift to the perspective of his executors. That is what this entire work is "about," so to speak, the nature of sex and violence, taken to the extreme example.
While we are on the topic of obscenity, what with Ulysses being one of our most recent posts, let me just say that Ugly Man, like the rest of Cooper's work excluding God Jr., which is practically family-friendly, would rate a 10 on the obscenity scale, which makes it more obscene than Naked Lunch, primarily because it makes sense.
One piece deserves special note--"The Anal Retentive Line Editor," which is probably the most exasperating thing in the book. It is like the centerpiece of the collection, and probably one of its longest pieces. It is funny, it is clever, and some may enjoy it immensely, but for me it got old rather quickly--though some of Cooper's self-consciousness makes it one of the highlights of any of his work, period.
The most pleasant surprise about Ugly Man, however, is the "P.S." feature at the end of the book, which is sort of like a DVD extra, brought by Harper Perennial. It seems that Cooper has hit the big time with this kind of attention--I've only previously seen one of these in Francine Prose's "Reading Like a Writer." And this one was much cooler. It has an interview with Cooper, by one of his fans, of whom Cooper is also a fan, apparently (Robert Gluck), and most interestingly, lists of his top 50 poems, top 50 songs by Robert Pollard, top 50 songs in general (which includes songs by Robert Pollard also), top 50 novels, and top 50 films, I think, in no particular order. This was easily the best part of the book. The interview provides the most quotable material:
"Well I guess I did become the writer I imagined I'd be, didn't I? My work seems to mean a lot to a certain kind of young person, and I get a lot of really moving e-mails and letters from young writers who say my work inspires them to write. So I guess your theory makes sense. Of course I never imagined the whole publishing world nonsense and the difficulty of cracking the literary establishment and the lack of financial reward for being this kind of writer. But, yeah, when I'm discouraged by the insurmountable problems that my work creates for itself and for me, realizing that I've achieved what I dreamed of achieving keeps me on track." (4, P.S.)
As if that were not enough there are also five poems by Cooper. Basically, I don't recommend this if this is your first time reading him--but I think fans of his will find much to like about it. I do think it is better than Wrong, and certainly Period, which threatened to collapse under its overwhelming desire to experiment. Ugly Man is experimental, but in a way that adapts the present climate of fiction, which has moved increasingly towards this "flash" thing--something between a poem and a story. Cooper may not be the master of this genre yet, but he has certainly added his own personal stamp to it, and on that basis alone, much of what he has created can exist comfortably alongside more celebrated short, short fiction.
I really hope that he comes out with a new novel soon, though. That would be cool. If I could I would read his blog and ask him to read S/M, because I never would have written it if it weren't for reading his work.
The closest reference point for this book would be Wrong, his collection of short stories published in 1992. Since that year, his star has grown bright, and he is probably more popular than ever before, thanks in no small part to his blog. I first read Try in 2003, followed quickly by Guide, then later My Loose Thread, Frisk, and Closer. For a while I didn't read anything by him, convinced the rest was not necessarily worth it--but God Jr. came out relatively recently, and that was interesting to see a different side of the writer. Finally while in L.A., I capped things off with Period and Wrong, later re-reading Try, which is the only other book by him reviewed on this blog http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/05/try-dennis-cooper.html. Now I want to read Guide again because I look back upon the part of his oeuvre that I have read, and I feel compelled to rank it in this order:
1) Try
2) Frisk
3) My Loose Thread
4) Guide
5) Closer
6) God Jr.
7) Ugly Man
8) Wrong
9) Period
And if you were to include Userlands, his anthology of online literature (the impetus for this blog, and its 12th post, http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/userlands-new-fiction-writers-from.html), it would rank beneath Period, probably. I could discuss them all, but let's keep things on Ugly Man, because there is a lot to discuss. Basically, I think it is better than Wrong, while still being very similar, because of the strength of a few of its pieces that go beyond 70% of the rest of the material--in particular, "Jerk," "The Worst (1960-1971)," and the powerful, closing "The Ash Gray Proclamation." Mostly it consists of really short pieces, varying in length from one paragraph to three pages. Flash fiction, I guess.
Sometimes the really short pieces work ("The Boy on the Far Left," "Graduate Seminar," and "Brian aka 'Bear'") and other times they just bleed into each other and seem pretty pointless. "Knife/Tape/Rope" is pretty decent as far as the other pieces that avoid categorization--or rather, fit neatly into the preconceptions of what a short story should appear to be. "The Hostage Drama" is another example of something that works in the end.
But pretty much everything else winds up sounding like an echo of Wrong--and what went wrong with it, pardon the pun. Which is that, forced to work within the confines of a smaller piece, much of Cooper's work loses its emotional impact and instead more closely approaches "torture porn," as with the shorter pieces the torture and the porn are introduced rather quickly, and violently, abruptly cut off. The plot is practically the same for every single one of these pieces--sexually confused teenage boy wants to die, and he happens to find friends that get off by murdering and raping him at the same time, and then sometimes the story will shift to the perspective of his executors. That is what this entire work is "about," so to speak, the nature of sex and violence, taken to the extreme example.
While we are on the topic of obscenity, what with Ulysses being one of our most recent posts, let me just say that Ugly Man, like the rest of Cooper's work excluding God Jr., which is practically family-friendly, would rate a 10 on the obscenity scale, which makes it more obscene than Naked Lunch, primarily because it makes sense.
One piece deserves special note--"The Anal Retentive Line Editor," which is probably the most exasperating thing in the book. It is like the centerpiece of the collection, and probably one of its longest pieces. It is funny, it is clever, and some may enjoy it immensely, but for me it got old rather quickly--though some of Cooper's self-consciousness makes it one of the highlights of any of his work, period.
The most pleasant surprise about Ugly Man, however, is the "P.S." feature at the end of the book, which is sort of like a DVD extra, brought by Harper Perennial. It seems that Cooper has hit the big time with this kind of attention--I've only previously seen one of these in Francine Prose's "Reading Like a Writer." And this one was much cooler. It has an interview with Cooper, by one of his fans, of whom Cooper is also a fan, apparently (Robert Gluck), and most interestingly, lists of his top 50 poems, top 50 songs by Robert Pollard, top 50 songs in general (which includes songs by Robert Pollard also), top 50 novels, and top 50 films, I think, in no particular order. This was easily the best part of the book. The interview provides the most quotable material:
"Well I guess I did become the writer I imagined I'd be, didn't I? My work seems to mean a lot to a certain kind of young person, and I get a lot of really moving e-mails and letters from young writers who say my work inspires them to write. So I guess your theory makes sense. Of course I never imagined the whole publishing world nonsense and the difficulty of cracking the literary establishment and the lack of financial reward for being this kind of writer. But, yeah, when I'm discouraged by the insurmountable problems that my work creates for itself and for me, realizing that I've achieved what I dreamed of achieving keeps me on track." (4, P.S.)
As if that were not enough there are also five poems by Cooper. Basically, I don't recommend this if this is your first time reading him--but I think fans of his will find much to like about it. I do think it is better than Wrong, and certainly Period, which threatened to collapse under its overwhelming desire to experiment. Ugly Man is experimental, but in a way that adapts the present climate of fiction, which has moved increasingly towards this "flash" thing--something between a poem and a story. Cooper may not be the master of this genre yet, but he has certainly added his own personal stamp to it, and on that basis alone, much of what he has created can exist comfortably alongside more celebrated short, short fiction.
I really hope that he comes out with a new novel soon, though. That would be cool. If I could I would read his blog and ask him to read S/M, because I never would have written it if it weren't for reading his work.
Monday, December 28, 2009
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
We have a new first on Flying Houses--the first book to merit two different posts. This is what I wrote back in May: http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/05/american-pastoral-philip-roth.html
Recently my parents were lent a copy of American Pastoral and after finishing Ulysses, decided to finish off the last 120 pages before I went back to something even easier to read than Roth in comparison with Joyce. I loved the beginning of American Pastoral--up through page 300 at least, but I have to admit the ending is a bit of a letdown. It is still a good book all in all.
But I see I am getting ahead of myself. I wanted to deliver on an unkept promise of the story of the beach reader in Nantucket. This occurred in the summer of 2007--early July. I was on a beach there with my family. The five of us or so tromped in, laid down our blankets, and chattered a bit as we completed this process. We put on suntan lotion and prepared to either go swimming or lay in the sun and read. Nearby us was a man who appeared to be a hippie, and I only say that because he had long hair. This is not to cast aspersions on hippies, but perhaps sometimes they possess this quality of being total asses when all along they feel they are behaving in line with the commonly-accepted paradigm of the hippie--which is, it's all good, I don't care, everything is permitted. Anyways he moved the five or so feet over to us that separated our spots, and said, "Hello. How are you?" We said, "Good." He said, "Are you enjoying yourself to day here on the beach?" And we said, "Yes, it's nice, thank you." And he said, "Well, I am trying to enjoy myself too, and I would appreciate it if you would keep it down a bit. We're all trying to enjoy the beach here, let's share it respectfully." Or some garbage like that. And I said, "I'm sorry! I'll shut up!" And he said, "Don't misunderstand me." And I think I said, "Oh, I understand you perfectly." And that was the end of it. He went back to his beach chair and he was reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.
The other anecdote is pretty much already told, and is not such a castigation of the type of readers Philip Roth can attract. That is to say, he is very popular, and though most people that like to read are cool, many people that like to read still do in fact suck horribly. I have read Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint, Everyman, and The Professor of Desire. Actually, one of the first posts on Flying Houses. http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/professor-desire-philip-roth.html. Post #4. The 2nd book reviewed after Mann's Doctor Faustus. American Pastoral is automatically the best book I have read by Roth--but I have to say that I consider it on equal footing with Goodbye, Columbus. I have liked everything I've read by him though and look forward to many of his other works. I do not know if I can find anything to quote, primarily because I am so far removed from the majority of the novel, seven months ago. But I did want to comment on not enjoying the ending as much as the beginning.
Actually, the book takes a while to get started. For the first 120 pages or so, I wasn't really that interested in it. Oh, I was going to finish it alright, but it wasn't especially great. But then for about a 180 page stretch, it became truly great--right around the point where the Swede is talking to Merry about staying overnight in New York with dangerous people.
There are long stretches about running a glove factory which may bore some readers. I was slightly bored, but Roth kept it reasonably interesting. It seems like he did a lot of research to make the depiction of this business very accurate. These characters, and their setting, are fully lived in, they are almost 100% human. I think that is what separates this from the rest of his.
The ending though, vaguely disappointed me. It's like, after Merry does what she does, and becomes a fugitive, Roth goes into this description of the Swede's marriage to Dawn (but I feel like--didn't he have another wife after her? Wasn't that described early in the book? I have a hard time remembering.) in Old Rimrock, NJ and what basically amounts to one really long scene with the Swede's father and mother, Dawn, their neighbors Bill and Jessie Orcutt, and friends and speech therapist/protector of Merry, Sheila and Shelly Salzman, having a barbeque, and talking about Deep Throat and Nixon. This scene has its moments, such as the final shocking revelation about the fidelity of their marriage, and there was at least one hilarious moment (spoiler!):
"Well, perhaps not all, the Swede discovered as he stood peering in through the kitchen door from the big granite step outside. Why he hadn't just opened the door and gone straight ahead into his own kitchen to say that Jessie was in serious need of her husband was because of the way Orcutt was leaning over Dawn while Dawn was leaning over the sink, shucking the corn. In the first instant it looked to the Swede--despite the fact that Dawn needed no such instruction--as though Orcutt were showing Dawn how to shuck corn, bending over her from behind and, with his hands on hers, helping her get the knack of cleanly removing the husk and the silk. But if he was helping her learn to shuck corn, why, beneath the expanse of his Hawaiian shirt, were his hips and his buttocks moving like that? And why was Dawn saying--if the Swede was correctly reading her lips--"Not here, not here..." Why not shuck the corn here? The kitchen was as good a place as any. No, it took a moment to figure out that, one, they were not merely shucking corn together and two, not all of the effervescence, flamboyance, boldness, defiance, disappointment, and despair nibbling at the edges of the old-line durability was necessarily sated by wearing those shirts.
So this was why she was always losing her patience with Orcutt--to put me off track! Making cracks about his bloodlessness, his breeding, his empty warmth, putting him down like that whenever we are about to get into bed. Sure, she talks that way--she has to, she's in love with him. The unfaithfulness to the house was never unfaithfulness to the house--it was unfaithfulness. 'The poor wife doesn't drink for no reason. Always holding everything back. So busy being so polite,' Dawn said, 'so Princeton,' Dawn said, ' so unerring. He works so hard to be one-dimensional. That Wasp blandness. Living completely off what they once were. The man is simply not there half the time.'
Well, Orcutt was there now, right there. What the Swede believed he'd seen, before quickly turning back to the terrace and the steak on the fire, was Orcutt putting himself exactly where he intended to be, while telling Dawn exactly where he was. 'There! There! There! There!' And he did not appear to be holding anything back." (335-336)
And the book does end on a somewhat shocking note. On the whole, something I will definitely read again, and a very tough one for Roth to top. But I look forward to trying to find something I like even better in his oeuvre, because it's possible that exists.
Recently my parents were lent a copy of American Pastoral and after finishing Ulysses, decided to finish off the last 120 pages before I went back to something even easier to read than Roth in comparison with Joyce. I loved the beginning of American Pastoral--up through page 300 at least, but I have to admit the ending is a bit of a letdown. It is still a good book all in all.
But I see I am getting ahead of myself. I wanted to deliver on an unkept promise of the story of the beach reader in Nantucket. This occurred in the summer of 2007--early July. I was on a beach there with my family. The five of us or so tromped in, laid down our blankets, and chattered a bit as we completed this process. We put on suntan lotion and prepared to either go swimming or lay in the sun and read. Nearby us was a man who appeared to be a hippie, and I only say that because he had long hair. This is not to cast aspersions on hippies, but perhaps sometimes they possess this quality of being total asses when all along they feel they are behaving in line with the commonly-accepted paradigm of the hippie--which is, it's all good, I don't care, everything is permitted. Anyways he moved the five or so feet over to us that separated our spots, and said, "Hello. How are you?" We said, "Good." He said, "Are you enjoying yourself to day here on the beach?" And we said, "Yes, it's nice, thank you." And he said, "Well, I am trying to enjoy myself too, and I would appreciate it if you would keep it down a bit. We're all trying to enjoy the beach here, let's share it respectfully." Or some garbage like that. And I said, "I'm sorry! I'll shut up!" And he said, "Don't misunderstand me." And I think I said, "Oh, I understand you perfectly." And that was the end of it. He went back to his beach chair and he was reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.
The other anecdote is pretty much already told, and is not such a castigation of the type of readers Philip Roth can attract. That is to say, he is very popular, and though most people that like to read are cool, many people that like to read still do in fact suck horribly. I have read Goodbye, Columbus, Portnoy's Complaint, Everyman, and The Professor of Desire. Actually, one of the first posts on Flying Houses. http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/professor-desire-philip-roth.html. Post #4. The 2nd book reviewed after Mann's Doctor Faustus. American Pastoral is automatically the best book I have read by Roth--but I have to say that I consider it on equal footing with Goodbye, Columbus. I have liked everything I've read by him though and look forward to many of his other works. I do not know if I can find anything to quote, primarily because I am so far removed from the majority of the novel, seven months ago. But I did want to comment on not enjoying the ending as much as the beginning.
Actually, the book takes a while to get started. For the first 120 pages or so, I wasn't really that interested in it. Oh, I was going to finish it alright, but it wasn't especially great. But then for about a 180 page stretch, it became truly great--right around the point where the Swede is talking to Merry about staying overnight in New York with dangerous people.
There are long stretches about running a glove factory which may bore some readers. I was slightly bored, but Roth kept it reasonably interesting. It seems like he did a lot of research to make the depiction of this business very accurate. These characters, and their setting, are fully lived in, they are almost 100% human. I think that is what separates this from the rest of his.
The ending though, vaguely disappointed me. It's like, after Merry does what she does, and becomes a fugitive, Roth goes into this description of the Swede's marriage to Dawn (but I feel like--didn't he have another wife after her? Wasn't that described early in the book? I have a hard time remembering.) in Old Rimrock, NJ and what basically amounts to one really long scene with the Swede's father and mother, Dawn, their neighbors Bill and Jessie Orcutt, and friends and speech therapist/protector of Merry, Sheila and Shelly Salzman, having a barbeque, and talking about Deep Throat and Nixon. This scene has its moments, such as the final shocking revelation about the fidelity of their marriage, and there was at least one hilarious moment (spoiler!):
"Well, perhaps not all, the Swede discovered as he stood peering in through the kitchen door from the big granite step outside. Why he hadn't just opened the door and gone straight ahead into his own kitchen to say that Jessie was in serious need of her husband was because of the way Orcutt was leaning over Dawn while Dawn was leaning over the sink, shucking the corn. In the first instant it looked to the Swede--despite the fact that Dawn needed no such instruction--as though Orcutt were showing Dawn how to shuck corn, bending over her from behind and, with his hands on hers, helping her get the knack of cleanly removing the husk and the silk. But if he was helping her learn to shuck corn, why, beneath the expanse of his Hawaiian shirt, were his hips and his buttocks moving like that? And why was Dawn saying--if the Swede was correctly reading her lips--"Not here, not here..." Why not shuck the corn here? The kitchen was as good a place as any. No, it took a moment to figure out that, one, they were not merely shucking corn together and two, not all of the effervescence, flamboyance, boldness, defiance, disappointment, and despair nibbling at the edges of the old-line durability was necessarily sated by wearing those shirts.
So this was why she was always losing her patience with Orcutt--to put me off track! Making cracks about his bloodlessness, his breeding, his empty warmth, putting him down like that whenever we are about to get into bed. Sure, she talks that way--she has to, she's in love with him. The unfaithfulness to the house was never unfaithfulness to the house--it was unfaithfulness. 'The poor wife doesn't drink for no reason. Always holding everything back. So busy being so polite,' Dawn said, 'so Princeton,' Dawn said, ' so unerring. He works so hard to be one-dimensional. That Wasp blandness. Living completely off what they once were. The man is simply not there half the time.'
Well, Orcutt was there now, right there. What the Swede believed he'd seen, before quickly turning back to the terrace and the steak on the fire, was Orcutt putting himself exactly where he intended to be, while telling Dawn exactly where he was. 'There! There! There! There!' And he did not appear to be holding anything back." (335-336)
And the book does end on a somewhat shocking note. On the whole, something I will definitely read again, and a very tough one for Roth to top. But I look forward to trying to find something I like even better in his oeuvre, because it's possible that exists.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Ulysses - James Joyce
Any discussion of Ulysses in 2009 must begin with the obvious: the Modern Library. Of course, this novel occupies the #1 slot of the "100 Best Novels" according to "The Board." According to "the Readers" it is #11. According to anyone that is not an English major, or a highly pretentious literary dilettante, it is unrecognized. It is obsolete. Or rather, it is highly regarded, but mysterious. Of all the books I have read there is only one other that can be put in the same class with it, and that would be Infinite Jest. Now, I gave up on Infinite Jest after about 300 or 400 pages (and I intend it try again in 2010), and I gave up on Ulysses after about 120 pages about 9 years ago. I still remember going to stay over in Hoboken, NJ, the night after going on a guided tour of what would become my alma mater, and remarking to my hostess for the evening that I tried reading the book, but that I didn't understand any of it, except for the phrase "ineluctable modality of the visible," and she said it was an impressive phrase nonetheless.
That phrase opens up Chapter 3 out of 18 (and just so you know, I had to go back and mark all 18 chapters tonight after finishing, so that I could be sure I properly understood the boundaries of this work), and it is one of the most commonly associated "things" with the book--I believe because it is about as far as most people get:
"Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see." (37)
Let us backtrack a moment. One of the most intelligible parts of my edition of Ulysses is the foreword by Morris L. Ernst and the decision by Judge John M. Woolsey, lifting the ban on Ulysses on December 6, 1933. Woolsey provides as fine a lens through which to view the novel as anyone:
"Joyce has attempted--it seems to me, with astonishing success--to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious. He shows how each of these impressions affects the life and behavior of the character which he is describing." (xi)
He also mentions that it is "not an easy book to read or understand" and that understatement seems typical of the writing practiced by legal professionals. Now, okay, I have yet to read a single volume from D.H. Lawrence or Joseph Conrad or William Gaddis, but let me just say that Ulysses is the hardest book I have ever read, and only Infinite Jest can compare (in my own experience) but a comparison of the two will have to wait for another time.
This will be a different sort of review for Flying Houses because most of the passages that I intend to include are not especially for beauty, but rather as examples of the difficulty its audience will find in trying to attain a coherent interpretation of the text. To some this may seem pointless, or pessimistic, but I am trying to look out for the average reader here. Most people will be able to understand at least a few parts of this book (after about page 450 it becomes noticeably easier on the eyes), but few will see the point in struggling towards the end.
Who struggles towards the end?
English majors and highly pretentious literary dilettantes, once again. I really don't think anybody who says, "Oh Ulysses is my favorite novel" is telling the truth, but rather showing off. It does not offer much pleasure for the reader. That it was banned on the grounds of being obscene or pornographic--written for the purpose of igniting the sexual excitement of the reader--is laughable. Oh, parts are certainly pornographic, but there is plenty of obscure vocabulary, irrelevant detail, confusing changes of scenery, randomly introduced characters, and, well, what seems on the surface to be PURE NONSENSE, to keep 99% of the general public at bay. Those looking for a more transparent thrill will find it here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/02/annotated-lolita-vladimir-nabokov-ed.html, it must be noted, #4 on the above-mentioned list. Of course that volume, along with Naked Lunch and our present topic, generally comprises the trifecta of the most notorious banned books. Ulysses has much in common with Naked Lunch, but its degree of obscenity---on a scale of 1-10, Naked Lunch is about a 9, and Ulysses is about a 5--but the percentage of the actual text that is obscene--that is where they differ. Ulysses has nearly as much politics in it as sex. Naked Lunch has nearly as much drugs in it as sex.
But that is not a bad starting point to understanding the type of book Ulysses is--that is, like Naked Lunch or Infinite Jest. It's not very straightforward. These writers (Joyce, Burroughs, Wallace) are capable of straightforward storytelling, but it appears they find it boring. They experiment with form (Ulysses chief virtue, in my mind, is its sheer creativity; Burroughs obviously did the "cut-up" thing; and Wallace has his footnotes, though Salinger, among others I am sure, also did those, but not to the same degree, I am sure), they end up alienating a ton of readers, but they don't care and they end up creating some of the most enduring masterpieces of the English language--or at least the most controversial or provocative.
That phrase opens up Chapter 3 out of 18 (and just so you know, I had to go back and mark all 18 chapters tonight after finishing, so that I could be sure I properly understood the boundaries of this work), and it is one of the most commonly associated "things" with the book--I believe because it is about as far as most people get:
"Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see." (37)
Let us backtrack a moment. One of the most intelligible parts of my edition of Ulysses is the foreword by Morris L. Ernst and the decision by Judge John M. Woolsey, lifting the ban on Ulysses on December 6, 1933. Woolsey provides as fine a lens through which to view the novel as anyone:
"Joyce has attempted--it seems to me, with astonishing success--to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious. He shows how each of these impressions affects the life and behavior of the character which he is describing." (xi)
He also mentions that it is "not an easy book to read or understand" and that understatement seems typical of the writing practiced by legal professionals. Now, okay, I have yet to read a single volume from D.H. Lawrence or Joseph Conrad or William Gaddis, but let me just say that Ulysses is the hardest book I have ever read, and only Infinite Jest can compare (in my own experience) but a comparison of the two will have to wait for another time.
This will be a different sort of review for Flying Houses because most of the passages that I intend to include are not especially for beauty, but rather as examples of the difficulty its audience will find in trying to attain a coherent interpretation of the text. To some this may seem pointless, or pessimistic, but I am trying to look out for the average reader here. Most people will be able to understand at least a few parts of this book (after about page 450 it becomes noticeably easier on the eyes), but few will see the point in struggling towards the end.
Who struggles towards the end?
English majors and highly pretentious literary dilettantes, once again. I really don't think anybody who says, "Oh Ulysses is my favorite novel" is telling the truth, but rather showing off. It does not offer much pleasure for the reader. That it was banned on the grounds of being obscene or pornographic--written for the purpose of igniting the sexual excitement of the reader--is laughable. Oh, parts are certainly pornographic, but there is plenty of obscure vocabulary, irrelevant detail, confusing changes of scenery, randomly introduced characters, and, well, what seems on the surface to be PURE NONSENSE, to keep 99% of the general public at bay. Those looking for a more transparent thrill will find it here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/02/annotated-lolita-vladimir-nabokov-ed.html, it must be noted, #4 on the above-mentioned list. Of course that volume, along with Naked Lunch and our present topic, generally comprises the trifecta of the most notorious banned books. Ulysses has much in common with Naked Lunch, but its degree of obscenity---on a scale of 1-10, Naked Lunch is about a 9, and Ulysses is about a 5--but the percentage of the actual text that is obscene--that is where they differ. Ulysses has nearly as much politics in it as sex. Naked Lunch has nearly as much drugs in it as sex.
But that is not a bad starting point to understanding the type of book Ulysses is--that is, like Naked Lunch or Infinite Jest. It's not very straightforward. These writers (Joyce, Burroughs, Wallace) are capable of straightforward storytelling, but it appears they find it boring. They experiment with form (Ulysses chief virtue, in my mind, is its sheer creativity; Burroughs obviously did the "cut-up" thing; and Wallace has his footnotes, though Salinger, among others I am sure, also did those, but not to the same degree, I am sure), they end up alienating a ton of readers, but they don't care and they end up creating some of the most enduring masterpieces of the English language--or at least the most controversial or provocative.
Ulysses takes place on June 16, 1904 and is billed as an extremely loose interpretation of The Odyssey. Here is the plot as far as I can remember. There are two main characters, well, three: Stephen Dedalus (formerly featured prominently in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), Leopold Bloom, and Mrs. Marion Tweedy "Molly" Bloom. The third does not make her appearance until the final chapter but should be included as a main character because of the nature of that final chapter. The night before, Stephen stayed over at his medical student friend Buck Mulligan's boarding house, and the novel opens with them preparing to have breakfast. They drink together a lot and sometimes go to see whores. Stephen is about 22 and an English professor. The first three chapters, part I, detail his early morning. Chapter four and part II opens up with Leopold Bloom, wanting to buy a kidney from a butcher, preparing to to attend his friend Paddy Dignam's funeral. He goes later, and so does Stephen's father, Simon Dedalus, who apparently is very well respected about town. (But then later it appears they are actually poor? The first of many confusing interpretations I am bound to make.) After the funeral, he goes to a museum, but if this part is included in "present tense" in the novel, I missed it completely. He goes to a bookstore. Stephen's sister is there, I think. Later he goes to the beach, around sunset, and there is a girl named Gerty there.
It is at this point, the scene with Gerty on the beach, that the novel became tolerable to me. This section was the first part that I could truly call beautiful. Joyce switches perspectives from Gerty to Bloom as they regard one another from a distance. Bloom is the "strange man" that Gerty is attracted to, oddly trying to expose herself to him. It seems that Bloom is a big fan of looking up girls' skirts. Gerty is with a friend, and two toddler twins playing. There is a church service going on nearby (I think?). What is beautiful about this section is the way Joyce suddenly introduces the human element, with straightforward description. It reminded me of something I might read in Mann, albeit without the exhibitionism. At the end of the scene it is revealed that Gerty has a certain disability, and the manner in which this is discovered makes for arguably the most heartbreakingly beautiful moment of the novel. This is also apparently the masturbation scene, but I did not catch it. This is the 13th chapter in the novel, which ends roughly before page 400, and the moment at which the novel becomes palatable.
Though chapter 14 is pretty much impossible to read, chapter 15 is almost 200 pages long and takes the form of a play script, which makes it quicker to read. This is also a protracted scene in a whorehouse, which made me think, "Okay, so this is where it starts to get obscene." Yeah right! On the surface this seems like it would be one of the easier parts of the novel, but it is just as confusing as anything that came before. This is finally where part II ends. Chapter 16 and the beginning of part III involves Bloom taking Stephen away from the whores and into a cabman's shelter, drunk, and here, finally, the novel becomes understandable all the way until the end. Chapter 17 and 18 are definitely the two best parts of the entire book, in my opinion. 17 involves Bloom taking Stephen back to his house to recuperate--but the form of this chapter is what makes it so great, and allows Joyce to offer his most profound ruminations on the nature of existence.
But chapter 18 is the most fucked up part of the entire book-- and in case you didn't guess, the obscene part. Anybody that flips through Ulysses and sees that the final sixty or seventy pages appear to be one unbroken paragraph without punctuation might wince and feel that it is the final push of complexity before being freed of the chains that are this novel, but that is not the case. Actually, incredibly, this is the most transparent episode in the entire book. Bloom has gone to bed, and crawled beside his wife Molly--and Molly contemplates their life together as she tries to fall asleep. She also contemplates the many, many men she has cheated on her husband with, and this primarily comprises the "dirty" part of the book. And it does get quite dirty, but I don't think anybody that is able to read that far is going to be morally offended by it.
Finally, the last two pages of the book are incredibly beautiful. It is one of the most perfect endings I have ever read in my life. So it is worth it to get there.
But along the way, believe me, you will have to fight every urge to give up. The first twelve chapters of the book should make most people do that. Still, I have to point out that this book is extremely important for writers, and anybody who considers themselves a writer should force themselves to read all the way to the end, whether they understand it or not. The Wikipedia page is very helpful on this novel, but I didn't read it until I was finished.
Why is this book so important for writers specifically? Joyce's creativity. Chapter 7 of this novel takes the form of a series of newspaper headlines, and this form was mimicked by me when I was just 18 in the first essay I wrote for college, and many people found it quite good. The play format of Chapter 15 is not necessarily anything new, but the hallucinatory nature of this part is way ahead of its time (but so is this http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/12/faust-johann-wolfgang-von-goethe.html, our 1 year anniversary...sigh). The form of Chapter 17 has to be one of the most original devices ever employed in literature. Finally Chapter 18 should teach anyone that thought literary experimentation reached its apotheosis with the Beats a lesson. Also anyone that thought punk rock was an original idea in 1976.
Joyce also predates the MFA contingent with their lists of things:
"From his girdle hung a row of seastones which dangled at every move of his portentous frame and on these were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the Ardi Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane O'Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Rose, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O'Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M'Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshall MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castille, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo, Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W. Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Croker, Herotodus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare." (296-297)
Right there, if you ever need to think up a name for a character if you are writing a piece of fiction, go to this section of the book. This is one of at least three ridiculously long paragraphs containing tons of names. I don't understand anything about it.
Probably the most useful way to read Ulysses, in my opinion, is to go through it with a pencil or pen, and circle or underline every word that you do not know. You will find hundreds, I promise you. Perhaps a thousand. Some of them are made up, but you will be able to increase your vocabulary greatly if you make the effort to look up all of those words in a dictionary. The problem is that most of these words are obsolete anyways, and no one uses them anymore, and if you use them other people will just think you are being pedantic.
Another note about this text--it would help to have a grasp of Irish history. Do you know who Parnell is? I don't. Parnell is mentioned enough in this book to be considered a character. It is almost like people writing the name Bush in America one hundred years later. Except I think people will know who Bush was one hundred years from now. People will remember 9/11 for a while.
That is another thing about this book--its prophetic quality. Disaster in New York. Thousands killed. Read it and you'll understand. There are a few other instances of Joyce predicting future events. The Holocaust is not predicted per se, but the words "concentration camps" appear, and a lot of anti-semitism directed towards Bloom, who is part-Jewish.
But do not be discouraged, and push through to find beautiful parts such as this:
"For Gerty had her dreams that no-one knew of. She loved to read poetry and when she got a keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely confession album with the coral-pink cover to write her thoughts in she laid it in the drawer of her toilettable which, though it did not err on the side of luxury, was scrupulously neat and clean. It was there she kept her girlish treasures trove, the tortoiseshell combs, her child of Mary badge, the whiterose scent, the eyebrowleine, her alabaster pouncetbox and the ribbons to change when her things came home from the wash and there were some beautiful thoughts written in it in violet ink that she bought in Hely's of Dame Street for she felt that she too could write poetry if she could only express herself like that poem that appealed to her so deeply that she had copied out of the newspaper she found one evening round the potherbs. Art thou real, my ideal? it was called by Louis J. Walsh, Magherafelt, and after there was something about twilight, wilt thou ever? and oft-times the beauty of poetry, so sad in its transient loveliness, had misted her eyes with silent tears that the years were slipping by for her, one by one, and but for that one shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition and that was an accident coming down Dalkey hill and she always tried to conceal it. But it must end she felt. If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be no holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would make the great sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share his thoughts. Dearer than the whole world would she be to him and gild his days with happiness. There was the allimportant question and she was dying to know was he a married man or a widower who had lost his wife or some tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign name from the land of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But even if--what then? Would it make a very great difference? From everything in the least indelicate her finebread nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen woman off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men, with no respect for a girl's honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old flame he was in mourning for from the days beyond recall. She thought she understood. She would try to understand him because men were so different. The old love was waiting, waiting with little white hands stretched out, with blue appealing eyes. Heart of mine! She would follow her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide. Nothing else mattered. Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free." (363-365)
There are not many other very good reasons to read this book beyond the desire to witness a genius at work--and there are those that will persist in stating that Joyce is no genius, but a nut. And okay, from everything I've read or seen about Finnegan's Wake, it may have turned true--but Ulysses is not the work of a mind that has lost touch with its genius. It may have lost touch with populist sentiment, or the desire to be understood, but it is a work of genius, and near the end, as near the end of this contemporaneous novel of nearly the same length (http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/01/magic-mountain-thomas-mann.html), the reader forgets their preconceptions and just starts believing whatever the author writes, as fantastic as it may be, the author becomes the final authority on God, the universe, and the nature of existence:
"He believed that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminating these conditions?
There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and death: the monotonous menstruation of simian (and particularly) human females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres of which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis from infancy through maturity to decay." (697)
And here, when Bloom and Stephen are regarding the stars, near the end of the narrative, perhaps a commentary on the discovery of the atom:
"Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?
Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in the cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatazoa: of the incalcuable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by the cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached." (699)
I don't care to type much more, but here is an excerpt from the final chapter. To my mind, the primary merit of the final chapter is the way in which a single character is fully evoked, without reservations. Of course, Molly is unfaithful, but so is Bloom, and the nature of their adultery is arguably the most bittersweet, painful revelation of this entire work. They are compatible, so they stay together. But Molly is so tired of Bloom, and Bloom can be a lech at times--their adultery is almost approved. Bloom is still the more sympathetic character in the final chapter, as Molly contemplates how she would like Stephen to come around more often afterwards, for obvious reasons:
"Im sure hes very distinguished Id like to meet a man like that God not those other ruck besides hes young those fine young men I could see down in Margate strand bathing place from the side of the rock standing up in the sun naked like a God or something and then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that lovely little statue he bought I could look at him all day long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for you to listen theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also his lovely young cock there so simply I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so clean and white he looked with his boyish face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down what its only like gruel or the dew theres no danger besides hed be so clean compared with those pigs of men I supose never dream of washing it from 1 years end to the other most of them" (775-776)
In this final chapter, Joyce gets to the point that I have always thought I knew something about--that is, burying the sordid detail underneath a mountain of text, so that the reader will have to do the work to get there, so that it is almost like a secret or dirty joke that cannot be uttered aloud. Ulysses is obscene, but only really after about 700 pages, so no one should be bothered by it. It is not an affront to public morality more than any other book has been in the past, because barely anyone that is part of "the public" will be exposed to it. And there can be much value in a frank discussion of sexual mores, particularly in the 1920's, and mixed in with that, there can be real instances of proto-feminism:
"I dont care what anybody says itd be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it you wouldnt see women going and killing one another and slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it on horses yes because a woman whatever she does she knows where to stop sure they wouldn't in the world at all only for us they dont know what it is to be a woman and a mother how could they where would they all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look after them what I never had thats why I suppose hes running wild now out at night away from his books and studies and not living at home on account of the usual rowy house I suppose well its a poor case that those that have a fine son like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was watching two dogs up in her behind in the middle of the naked street that disheartened me altogether I suppose I oughtnt to have buried him in that little woolly jacket I knitted crying as I was but give it to some poor child but I knew well Id never have another our 1st death too it was we were never the same since O Im not going to think myself into the glooms about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt stay the night I felt all the time it was somebody strange he brought in instead of roving around the city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if she was alive ruining himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour so silent I used to love coming home after dances the air of the night they have friends they can talk to weve none either he wants what he wont get or its some woman ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in women no wonder they treat us the way they do we are a dreadful lot of bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have makes us so snappy Im not like that" (778-779)
I have said all I can on Ulysses, I think. I recommend it, but primarily for writers. I do not know if I will ever read it again. I might, but only if I wanted to write a novel that was a very loose retelling of the story, the way this was a very loose retelling of that older, classic story, which can be read by almost anyone. If anything, it made me want to re-read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners. Perhaps in 2010, those will appear on Flying Houses, and perhaps Infinite Jest will too. But don't hold me to that, please.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
The Lawyer Myth - Rennard Strickland, Frank T. Read
The Lawyer Myth is the second book I have read due to a recommendation by the Kaplan LSAT survey. They ask, "Have you read any of these books?" And they list, 1L by Scott Turow, The Lawyer Myth (which is actually pretty new, published in 2008), and 1L of a Ride (what I'll read if I enroll come February or March), and one or two others.
Basically, 1L was a more compelling read than The Lawyer Myth, but they have different purposes. Turow's purpose is to give a thorough (if dated) look at the first year of a Harvard Law School student. Strickland and Read's purpose is to defend the legal profession against its detractors. They achieve their goal, but at the cost of bias.
Obviously, lawyers are going to be biased! True, their aim is to bring about justice, and the greater good in general. There is an ethical code that they must follow much like the Hippocratic oath for doctors. But still, they trade in arguments, and they bring up the greatest possible points in order to convince their audience (the judge, the jury, the reader) that their opinion is the correct one. Nervous, potential 1L-ers will feel better about their decision, but it helps to maintain a healthy bit of skepticism while reading this book.
Strickland and Read are not lawyers, but legal professors, and former deans of law schools. Read was once even President of LSAC. Of course, they have a vested interest in saying there aren't too many lawyers, and that going to school to become a lawyer is a worthwhile pursuit.
They do make the statement that there are over 1 million minted lawyers in the USA. That means that 1 in 300 people is a lawyer. It seems higher than that, for me at least. I have 163 friends on Facebook and I think about ten of them are lawyers, or have legal ambitions.
Once I read an essay online, on the US News and World Report website, actually, entitled, "Why Law School is for Everyone." It was a great essay that allayed all of my anxieties about my impending application. Then came the comments. Let me try to find a link. Here we are: http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-law-schools/2009/04/22/why-law-school-is-for-everyone.html
If you don't want to waste your time reading those comments, I'll summarize. Law school costs close to $200,000. Obviously this total varies greatly with scholarships, housing, in-state public tuition, etc., but if you go in paying the full ticket price to NYU, which I think most people would if they could, you'll be out considerably more than $200,000 actually. Instead of worrying about buying property, law school graduates can worry about paying off loans for a long time. What if you can't get one of those snazzy $160,000 first year associate jobs at a big law firm? Well, you seem pretty fucked. And this is why all of my older sister's friends who are lawyers always say to her, "Tell him not to do it!" Furthermore, during the three years you are in law school, you could be working towards a promotion at another job, and actually building up your savings, rather than amassing some horrible debt that will threaten to destroy your will to live. (The flip side of this is that, you are probably going to law school because you can't get a job that offers much of a future, or you find your job tedious and meaningless.)
Strickland and Read do not discuss the cost of law school very deeply at all--they tend to focus on the media and its portrayal of lawyers and the legal profession. They say they are mad as hell about the way people have talked about lawyers, and they aren't going to take it anymore. Thankfully they come off more trustworthy than Glenn Beck. They do diss Bill O'Reilly at a point or two.
At 132 pages, the book reads wonderfully. It is brisk, and even entertaining at points. They acknowledge that the lawyer's job is often boring with this funny quote:
"Most of this day-to-day lawyering is so ordinary and dull that novelists and filmmakers pass it by. Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, concluded that 'nothing could be more boring than an absolutely accurate movie about the law.'" (6)
Strickland and Read do an excellent job of writing clearly and effectively, without the use of legalese, and presenting a few cases and opinions with a focused approach that will hold the reader's interest (which I fear real law school reading will fail to do). They write about the infamous case of the older lady who spilled McDonald's coffee and burned herself and sued the mega-corporation. They say that the facts were distorted by the media to give an image of the lawyer as the "ambulance-chaser." They write about how nobody would have ever heard the name Ryan White were it not for the lawyers that represented his case.
They even tell a few great stories about lawyers that will inspire:
"For forty years, the tobacco industry had won every case brought against it--that was, until Richard Scruggs appeared. Richard Scruggs is a small-town plaintiff's attorney from Mississippi, who started his career with class action lawsuits against the asbestos industry. Scruggs used his own money, more than $9 million from his successes in the asbestos cases, to tackle Big Tobacco in a Mississippi courtroom. In 1997, Scruggs and Mississippi's attorney general, Michael Moore, sued thirteen tobacco companies on behalf of the state's taxpayers in order to recover money expended on health care for smokers.
The two lawyers traveled across the country, eventually convincing the attorney generals of some forty other states to join their cause. In addition, Scruggs and Moore protected two very important whistleblowers, including the first high-level tobacco executive to turn against the companies. Once the tobacco industry was forced to the negotiating table, the companies agreed to pay an astonishing $368 billion in health-related damages. Among the achievements of the settlement were a $25 billion trust for tobacco-related medical research, a ban on all outdoor advertising and the use of cartoon characters, and the ability for individual smokers to bring their own lawsuits in the future. Because he had pursued the case on a contingent-fee basis, Scruggs stood to gain more than $1 billion from the settlement; however, he agreed to have his fees decided by a national panel of judges. More than collecting a giant fee, Scruggs said, he wanted to help the public, 'to really make a difference in the world. It was an inspiration. [Lawyers] got caught up in [the] feeling...they were really doing a service to humanity.' Currently, Scruggs is fighting insurance companies that have denied payment on thousands of damage claims in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Thus far, he has recovered $130 million from State Farm Insurance to be paid to policyholders in Mississippi." (96-97)
They do quote Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as saying, "Of course, the law is not the place for the artist or poet," but this book did make me feel better about the pursuit of a future in the legal field. This was an enjoyable read, and I recommend it--but I do not recommend reading without a few reservations in mind.
Basically, 1L was a more compelling read than The Lawyer Myth, but they have different purposes. Turow's purpose is to give a thorough (if dated) look at the first year of a Harvard Law School student. Strickland and Read's purpose is to defend the legal profession against its detractors. They achieve their goal, but at the cost of bias.
Obviously, lawyers are going to be biased! True, their aim is to bring about justice, and the greater good in general. There is an ethical code that they must follow much like the Hippocratic oath for doctors. But still, they trade in arguments, and they bring up the greatest possible points in order to convince their audience (the judge, the jury, the reader) that their opinion is the correct one. Nervous, potential 1L-ers will feel better about their decision, but it helps to maintain a healthy bit of skepticism while reading this book.
Strickland and Read are not lawyers, but legal professors, and former deans of law schools. Read was once even President of LSAC. Of course, they have a vested interest in saying there aren't too many lawyers, and that going to school to become a lawyer is a worthwhile pursuit.
They do make the statement that there are over 1 million minted lawyers in the USA. That means that 1 in 300 people is a lawyer. It seems higher than that, for me at least. I have 163 friends on Facebook and I think about ten of them are lawyers, or have legal ambitions.
Once I read an essay online, on the US News and World Report website, actually, entitled, "Why Law School is for Everyone." It was a great essay that allayed all of my anxieties about my impending application. Then came the comments. Let me try to find a link. Here we are: http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-law-schools/2009/04/22/why-law-school-is-for-everyone.html
If you don't want to waste your time reading those comments, I'll summarize. Law school costs close to $200,000. Obviously this total varies greatly with scholarships, housing, in-state public tuition, etc., but if you go in paying the full ticket price to NYU, which I think most people would if they could, you'll be out considerably more than $200,000 actually. Instead of worrying about buying property, law school graduates can worry about paying off loans for a long time. What if you can't get one of those snazzy $160,000 first year associate jobs at a big law firm? Well, you seem pretty fucked. And this is why all of my older sister's friends who are lawyers always say to her, "Tell him not to do it!" Furthermore, during the three years you are in law school, you could be working towards a promotion at another job, and actually building up your savings, rather than amassing some horrible debt that will threaten to destroy your will to live. (The flip side of this is that, you are probably going to law school because you can't get a job that offers much of a future, or you find your job tedious and meaningless.)
Strickland and Read do not discuss the cost of law school very deeply at all--they tend to focus on the media and its portrayal of lawyers and the legal profession. They say they are mad as hell about the way people have talked about lawyers, and they aren't going to take it anymore. Thankfully they come off more trustworthy than Glenn Beck. They do diss Bill O'Reilly at a point or two.
At 132 pages, the book reads wonderfully. It is brisk, and even entertaining at points. They acknowledge that the lawyer's job is often boring with this funny quote:
"Most of this day-to-day lawyering is so ordinary and dull that novelists and filmmakers pass it by. Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, concluded that 'nothing could be more boring than an absolutely accurate movie about the law.'" (6)
Strickland and Read do an excellent job of writing clearly and effectively, without the use of legalese, and presenting a few cases and opinions with a focused approach that will hold the reader's interest (which I fear real law school reading will fail to do). They write about the infamous case of the older lady who spilled McDonald's coffee and burned herself and sued the mega-corporation. They say that the facts were distorted by the media to give an image of the lawyer as the "ambulance-chaser." They write about how nobody would have ever heard the name Ryan White were it not for the lawyers that represented his case.
They even tell a few great stories about lawyers that will inspire:
"For forty years, the tobacco industry had won every case brought against it--that was, until Richard Scruggs appeared. Richard Scruggs is a small-town plaintiff's attorney from Mississippi, who started his career with class action lawsuits against the asbestos industry. Scruggs used his own money, more than $9 million from his successes in the asbestos cases, to tackle Big Tobacco in a Mississippi courtroom. In 1997, Scruggs and Mississippi's attorney general, Michael Moore, sued thirteen tobacco companies on behalf of the state's taxpayers in order to recover money expended on health care for smokers.
The two lawyers traveled across the country, eventually convincing the attorney generals of some forty other states to join their cause. In addition, Scruggs and Moore protected two very important whistleblowers, including the first high-level tobacco executive to turn against the companies. Once the tobacco industry was forced to the negotiating table, the companies agreed to pay an astonishing $368 billion in health-related damages. Among the achievements of the settlement were a $25 billion trust for tobacco-related medical research, a ban on all outdoor advertising and the use of cartoon characters, and the ability for individual smokers to bring their own lawsuits in the future. Because he had pursued the case on a contingent-fee basis, Scruggs stood to gain more than $1 billion from the settlement; however, he agreed to have his fees decided by a national panel of judges. More than collecting a giant fee, Scruggs said, he wanted to help the public, 'to really make a difference in the world. It was an inspiration. [Lawyers] got caught up in [the] feeling...they were really doing a service to humanity.' Currently, Scruggs is fighting insurance companies that have denied payment on thousands of damage claims in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Thus far, he has recovered $130 million from State Farm Insurance to be paid to policyholders in Mississippi." (96-97)
They do quote Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as saying, "Of course, the law is not the place for the artist or poet," but this book did make me feel better about the pursuit of a future in the legal field. This was an enjoyable read, and I recommend it--but I do not recommend reading without a few reservations in mind.
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