This will be the first holidays after Dad's death. I am not looking forward to it and it definitely shows, I'm crankier than usual and the thought of having to go out and see people fills me with that sort of anger that sets in when forced into any obligation that one would rather not attend.
And everything is making it worse: work, my new back and leg aches, my students, job searching. Everything is simply picking away at the little patience I have left. If I could, I would simply sleep until January 2 and then go from there.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
The Problem with Chuck
Let me start with a praise: I think Chuck Palahniuk's voice is among the most original in contemporary fiction. His first ten years include--Fight Club, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke, Lullaby, Diary, Rant and Haunted appeal to a wide audience and introduced characters and situations unlike anything in popular literature.
His earlier books feature characters everyone can relate to. Who has not been disturbed by the artificiality of consumer culture, beauty's detraction from intelligence, or addiction. Chuck once stated that the theme of his books is lonely people looking to connect with a community and who can't relate to that?
Since then his work has become increasingly difficult to enjoy, not because he's going highbrow like some pierced, demented Updike, but because he keeps retreading the same ideas and his characters are getting harder and harder to relate to.
Snuff examines sex and pornography in America, yea real original.
Pygmy is about a young agent sent to help destroy America. Sounds promising, but it has jokes about Wal-Mart, not exactly fresh ground.
Tell-All was so annoying I quit after two chapters.
Some of this decline may be due to personal turmoil. Chuck's mother died after a long bout with cancer and that may have affected the quality of his work. Examples of this abound: Fitzgerald's drinking, Lennon's separation from Yoko, (oddly though Hank Williams Sr. wrote his best songs when his life was falling apart).
Perhaps too much success has hurt Chuck, people buy his books, they regularly sell in the six figures, not exactly Harry Potter territory but not too shabby either. Perhaps the challenge of building an audience has evaporated, think Paul McCartney from 1975-1989 or Sting after the Police or U2 after 1991.
Some of the blame has to go to his editor and publishers. The pressure to sell books is intense and once an author is established, publishers and editors are reluctant to kill the golden goose. An editor is there to sharpen what works and cut what doesn't. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Infinite Jest all are great books because they had great editors.
My advice to Chuck: take a couple years off. Cormac McCarthy wrote ten novels in 45 years, each one is a great piece of American Literature, the shortest gap between them was two years, the longest was seven, yet his audience only gets bigger. Go do something else, no one's going to forget you, and you must have certainly saved some money up by now.
His earlier books feature characters everyone can relate to. Who has not been disturbed by the artificiality of consumer culture, beauty's detraction from intelligence, or addiction. Chuck once stated that the theme of his books is lonely people looking to connect with a community and who can't relate to that?
Since then his work has become increasingly difficult to enjoy, not because he's going highbrow like some pierced, demented Updike, but because he keeps retreading the same ideas and his characters are getting harder and harder to relate to.
Snuff examines sex and pornography in America, yea real original.
Pygmy is about a young agent sent to help destroy America. Sounds promising, but it has jokes about Wal-Mart, not exactly fresh ground.
Tell-All was so annoying I quit after two chapters.
Some of this decline may be due to personal turmoil. Chuck's mother died after a long bout with cancer and that may have affected the quality of his work. Examples of this abound: Fitzgerald's drinking, Lennon's separation from Yoko, (oddly though Hank Williams Sr. wrote his best songs when his life was falling apart).
Perhaps too much success has hurt Chuck, people buy his books, they regularly sell in the six figures, not exactly Harry Potter territory but not too shabby either. Perhaps the challenge of building an audience has evaporated, think Paul McCartney from 1975-1989 or Sting after the Police or U2 after 1991.
Some of the blame has to go to his editor and publishers. The pressure to sell books is intense and once an author is established, publishers and editors are reluctant to kill the golden goose. An editor is there to sharpen what works and cut what doesn't. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Infinite Jest all are great books because they had great editors.
My advice to Chuck: take a couple years off. Cormac McCarthy wrote ten novels in 45 years, each one is a great piece of American Literature, the shortest gap between them was two years, the longest was seven, yet his audience only gets bigger. Go do something else, no one's going to forget you, and you must have certainly saved some money up by now.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Read These NOW!!!!!
Two books to recommend, long time readers know I ain't gonna steer them wrong.
First up, where's Jimi in this video?
Playing backup to two soul singers by the numbers rendition of "Shotgun". That's what Hendrix did for years after leaving the Army.
Becoming Jimi Hendrix by Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber.
Roby and Schreider do what no other biographers of Hendrix have done which is discuss his musical development before 1967. By the time he “burst out of nowhere”, Hendrix had put in 6-7 years on the Southern chitlin circuit in various bands and as a sideman backing Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Ike and Tina Turner, Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, Joey Dee and the Starlighters, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett and others.
Hendrix later said these were his most formative years as a musician. One anecdote that Jimi told a young player in 1964 was to learn every kind of chord there is cause that’s what he had been doing for years as a sideman. Features a comprehensive discography of records Hendrix played n during this period.
Also mentions a growing controversy that Hendrix may have been murdered by his co-manager, Michael Jeffrey—an ex MI-5 agent, who collected a 7 figure insurance policy after Jimi’s death, a conspiracy hotly denied by Jeffery's former business partner.
Checked out from Georgetown Public Library.
There is also a website mentioned by the author's that is devoted strictly to the pre-1967 Hendrix recordings.
And in fiction,
Lisa Lutz returns bringing, and I say this without hyperbole, the funniest book I have read all year about pot smoking amateur detective brother-and-sister duos plagued by a headless corpse on their property. Now that would be enough to capture most readers, but here is what gives it that little extra zing that keeps you reading way long after you should have gone to bed. Lutz co-wrote the book with her ex-boyfriend, the poet David Hayward. The rule is that each author would alternate a chapter and the other author could not change what was written. So when Hayward creates a character that Lutz feels is distracting, she kills him off. The end of each chapter also features excerpts from emails between them as they snipe about each other's progress and bring up an apparently disasterous trip they took together years ago, I think they ran out of gas and had to eat a bald eagle to survive.
Apparently the two authors are now on book tour and have continued their humorous collaboration at the Huffington Post
First up, where's Jimi in this video?
Playing backup to two soul singers by the numbers rendition of "Shotgun". That's what Hendrix did for years after leaving the Army.
Becoming Jimi Hendrix by Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber.
Roby and Schreider do what no other biographers of Hendrix have done which is discuss his musical development before 1967. By the time he “burst out of nowhere”, Hendrix had put in 6-7 years on the Southern chitlin circuit in various bands and as a sideman backing Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Ike and Tina Turner, Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, Joey Dee and the Starlighters, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett and others.
Hendrix later said these were his most formative years as a musician. One anecdote that Jimi told a young player in 1964 was to learn every kind of chord there is cause that’s what he had been doing for years as a sideman. Features a comprehensive discography of records Hendrix played n during this period.
Also mentions a growing controversy that Hendrix may have been murdered by his co-manager, Michael Jeffrey—an ex MI-5 agent, who collected a 7 figure insurance policy after Jimi’s death, a conspiracy hotly denied by Jeffery's former business partner.
Checked out from Georgetown Public Library.
There is also a website mentioned by the author's that is devoted strictly to the pre-1967 Hendrix recordings.
And in fiction,
Lisa Lutz returns bringing, and I say this without hyperbole, the funniest book I have read all year about pot smoking amateur detective brother-and-sister duos plagued by a headless corpse on their property. Now that would be enough to capture most readers, but here is what gives it that little extra zing that keeps you reading way long after you should have gone to bed. Lutz co-wrote the book with her ex-boyfriend, the poet David Hayward. The rule is that each author would alternate a chapter and the other author could not change what was written. So when Hayward creates a character that Lutz feels is distracting, she kills him off. The end of each chapter also features excerpts from emails between them as they snipe about each other's progress and bring up an apparently disasterous trip they took together years ago, I think they ran out of gas and had to eat a bald eagle to survive.
Apparently the two authors are now on book tour and have continued their humorous collaboration at the Huffington Post
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Jefferson and our time
There is a curious trait in American political discussion of trying to ascertain what the Founding Fathers would think about this issue or that issue. Because of his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson is often brought to the forefront of these discussions. In the past Jefferson has been claimed by slaveowners and abolitionists; integrationists and segregationists; isolationists and internationalists. Today he is claimed by both the Left and the Right, both sides pull him into the ongoing debates about health care, the economy, the rights of states and many other issues. (I admit I am super guilty of this). There is a feeling that if we could magically resurrect Jefferson and ask him his opinion about health care or the bank bailout, we could solve these issues once and for all (to a lesser extent, Madison, Adams, Franklin and Washington get pulled into this sort of forecasting as well).
If we resurrected Jefferson, and once he had gotten past his amazement that the United States still existed (the Founding Fathers as students of history knew that all nations eventually end, Madison thought the US would start ending about 1930, Adams about 1980), Jefferson’s answer would be “figure it out for yourselves, this is your world, not mine”. Jefferson’s views were formed by the world he lived in and that world has long since disappeared. It began disappearing in 1865 when slavery was abolished, in 1920 when the majority of Americans were living in cities, the 1930s New Deal, the end of segregation.
In private letters with James Madison, Jefferson floated an idea that the laws and debt of each generation should not be passed on to the next generation. Obviously, a recipe for chaos, but it demonstrates Jefferson’s belief that each generation would have to make its own way in the world. To paraphrase, the “legacy of Jefferson is to be hostile to all legacies”. Jefferson would be the first to find our habit of consulting the founders about issues they could never dream about disturbing and irrational.
If we resurrected Jefferson, and once he had gotten past his amazement that the United States still existed (the Founding Fathers as students of history knew that all nations eventually end, Madison thought the US would start ending about 1930, Adams about 1980), Jefferson’s answer would be “figure it out for yourselves, this is your world, not mine”. Jefferson’s views were formed by the world he lived in and that world has long since disappeared. It began disappearing in 1865 when slavery was abolished, in 1920 when the majority of Americans were living in cities, the 1930s New Deal, the end of segregation.
In private letters with James Madison, Jefferson floated an idea that the laws and debt of each generation should not be passed on to the next generation. Obviously, a recipe for chaos, but it demonstrates Jefferson’s belief that each generation would have to make its own way in the world. To paraphrase, the “legacy of Jefferson is to be hostile to all legacies”. Jefferson would be the first to find our habit of consulting the founders about issues they could never dream about disturbing and irrational.
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