With the new Stephen Malkmus & Jicks album set to drop any day now, we thought we’d take a look at the history of SM’s ouvre via his past album covers.
Slanted and Enchanted (1992): Pavement’s first full length defines the so-called lo-fi indie rock sound: scrawling guitars that went to school on Sonic Youth’s Sister, ramshackle percussion (courtesy of original crazy-ass Gary Young), cryptic lyrics, and toneless melodies. The first album also sets the template for the Pavement aesthetic: notebook graffiti, polysemous symbols, postpunk DIY collage work, and lots of scribbling. Key tracks: “Summer Babe,” “In the Mouth a Desert,” “Trigger Cut.”
Westing by Musket and Sextant (1993): The first Pavement record I bought. On tape! From Camelot Music. Because they didn’t have Slanted and Enchanted. The DIY cover is riddled with seemingly cryptic messages that are actually references to songs and albums that Pavement liked (e.g. “Maps and Legends” by REM). Westing takes the DIY look of Slanted to the next level, and helps to inform not just the way Pavement albums and singles will look for the next few years, but also seems to codify the indie rock look in general (see also: Sebadoh). Key tracks: “Box Elder,” “Forklift,” “Debris Slide.”
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994): This is the first album I remember anticipating coming out. “Luck on every finger”–more cryptology. Was the second song called “Ell Ess Two” or “Elevate Me Later,” or maybe it was “LS2”? Is that SM’s handwriting? An album about rock music. It didn’t leave my CD player for the next three years, and that is no exaggeration. Key tracks: The whole album is perfect. “Gold Soundz” works on any mixtape if you’re in a pinch though. My favorite track might be “Stop Breathin’,” which I think is about the Civil War. For years I thought that Pavement included the only bad track on Crooked Rain, “Hit the Plane Down,” as a kind of purposeful marring, like ancient artisans who included a flaw in their art so as not to displease the gods. Later I just realized that that was the Spiral Staircase track. Continue reading “SM and Pavement: Album Cover Retrospective”→
Kevin Shields claims that a “new” My Bloody Valentine record will come out this year. Hold your breath. Anyway. Kevin Shields. Loveless. Yeah, that was really good. “If They Move, Kill ‘Em (MBV Arkestra),” I like that too. MBV–never really made a good video.
Don’t start with me. I know Peter Hook played bass. Bass is a guitar, right? I love New Order. Who can deny Peter Hook’s iconic bass leads. Sure, Bernard Sumner had that jangly thing down, but, c’mon, “Ceremony”? “Disorder”? “Temptation”? “Blue Monday”? “Perfect Kiss”? “Love Vigilantes”? Give me a break, those are perfect songs, and you know it’s because of Hook’s sweet lines. Shit, even “Regret” is awesome. Peter Hook is too good. Sumner looks kind of like Thomas Lennon playing Lt. Dangle in this vid:
Polvo never got their due. Maybe they’ll get a renaissance one day. They were the loudest band I’ve ever seen (they permanently damaged my hearing). They were one of the first bands I listened to where I said “What the fuck is this?” Great stuff, bendy electric. Chewy churny. I saw them cover “Fly Like an Eagle” at Merge Record’s fifth anniversary party. Ash Bowie played what looked like a little SK1. He kicked a stool at the girls from Tsunami, who were filming the show.
This month’s issue of Harper’s has some great stuff, including a selection called “The Compliance Branch” from David Foster Wallace’s current work in progress. In the short piece, an unidentified narrator is overcome by a “fierce” infant:
The infant’s face, as I experienced it, was mostly eyes and lower lip, its nose a mere pinch, its forehead milky and domed, its pale red hair wispy, no eyebrows or lashes or even eyelids I could see. I never saw it blink. Its features seemed suggestions only. It had roughly as much face as a whale does. I did not like it at all.
Doesn’t this guy know that all babies are special? Evidence of special babies:
You can read DFW’s last piece for Harper’s, “Tense Present,” an essay about grammar and usage and democracy, here. Or, alternately, you could treat yourself to the entirety of Consider the Lobster, where said essay is collected. Or, if you’re spectacularly lazy, hear DFW read unpublished work here and here.
Harper’s also has a great essay by ‘klept fave Ursula K. LeGuin. In “Staying Awake,” LeGuin takes on the relationship between reading, capitalism, literature in art. Good stuff. Bibliophile’s will appreciate LeGuin on the physiognomy of books:
The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn’t have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you are fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book.
If you haven’t read LeGuin, I highly recommend The Left Hand of Darkness, a book that scrutinizes gender roles with more interesting results than, say, Eugenides’s Middlesex or Woolf’s Orlando.
Abrupt transition: Sunshine, the latest movie from director Danny Boyle, the mastermind behind Trainspotting, Millions, and 28 Days Later,is out on DVD. Sunshine, scripted by long-time Boyle collaborator Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later), was eaten alive last summer by a host of tertiary blockbuster sequels. I liked Sunshine; in addition to being a shiny, beautiful movie, it also raised some interesting questions about the cost of existence, individual worth, and the merits of self-sacrifice. Although the end unravels a bit, the movie is well worth seeing. Recommended.
What’s the deal with the biscuits? Do they really expect this to suffice for a six months’ imperialistic voyage for exotic spices? And the servings they give you—is this for, like, a baby sailor? Did I accidentally request the infant meal?
Ishmael’s a hack–get it? Is there anything funnier than whaling humor?
Welcome to a new feature at the Biblioklept, “Essential Short Story Collections,” in which we take a look at some, uh, short story collections that are essential (how’s that for a tautology?). Because we here at Biblioklept Headquarters USA always put Jesus first, and because his latest novel Tree of Smoke was so dang good, why not start with Denis Johnson’s 1992 collection Jesus’ Son?
Jesus’ Son is almost a novel in short story form. The unnamed narrator of the stories is an alcoholic drug addict who manages to survive through a mix of petty thievery, odd odd jobs, and straight-up bumming it. The collection opens with “Car Crash While Hitchhiking.” The title of this story is in no way misleading. And although the first story winds up with the narrator hospitalized and blacking out (initiating a motif in Jesus’ Son), the next story, “Two Men” finds him reasonably healthy and up to no good. “Two Men” is a meditation on the bonds of friendship and an outstanding example of Johnson’s tight prose:
I was being taken out of the dance by my two good friends. I had forgotten my friends had come with me, but there they were. Once again I hated the two of them. The three of us had formed a group based on something erroneous, some basic misunderstanding that hadn’t yet come to light, and so we kept on in one another’s company, going to bars and having conversations. Generally one of these false coalitions died after a day or a day and a half, but this one had lasted more than a year. Later on one of them got hurt when we were burglarizing a pharmacy, and the other two of us dropped him bleeding at the back entrance of the hospital and he was arrested and all the bonds were dissolved.
Friends! Good stuff. Other stand-outs in the collection include “Work,” a story about stealing copper wire, and “Emergency,” a tale involving copping pills from an emergency room job. Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson, “Emergency” perfectly captures drug-addled paranoia overflowing into petty existential questing. An encounter with some normals:
A family in a big Dodge, the only car we’d seen in a long time, slowed down and gawked out the windows as they passed by. The father said, “What is it, a snake?”
“No, it’s not a snake,” Georgie said, It’s a rabbit with babies inside it.”
“Babies!” the mother said, and the father sped the car forward, over the protests of several little kids in the back.
Georgie came back to my side of the truck with his shirtfront stretched out in front of him as if he were carrying apples in it, or some such, but they were, in fact, slimy miniature bunnies. “No way I’m eating those things, ” I told him.
The last story in Jesus’ Son, “Beverly Home,” finds our narrator in a somewhat more stable position, working in a retirement home and attending NA and AA meetings. His one vice and indulgence is voyeurism; he takes to watching a Mennonite couple through their windows at night, progressing from deviant sex-obsession to pining for their mundane life:
I got so I enjoyed seeing them sitting in their living room talking, almost not talking at all, reading the Bible, saying grace, eating their supper in the kitchen alcove, as much as I liked watching her naked in the shower.
At the end of the book, moved by the strange spectacle of a man washing his wife’s feet, the narrator finds a kind of hope and redemption for the future:
All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.
I mentioned above that Jesus’ Son can almost be read as a novel, but make no mistake–it is a collection of short stories, character sketches, vignettes that add up to something greater. The 2000 film adaptation of the movie makes this quite clear. Although the film, starring Billy Crudup as the unnamed narrator, is not half bad, the disconnected and fragmentary nature of the book–which reinforced the book’s themes of existential alienation and minor redemption–comes across as episodic and even whimsical in the movie.
I highly recommend Jesus’ Son, and I hope that people who “don’t have time to read” will make a little space in their day for this slim but substantial book. Most of the stories can be read in under half an hour, so why not pick up a copy?
This weekend, I watched and thoroughly enjoyed David Fincher’s Zodiac, a film I initially had no interest in seeing, but nonetheless dutifully queued up when it wound up on numerous critics’ year-end top ten lists. When Zodiac came out last year, I prejudicially–and wrongly–assumed that the film, the tale of the infamous Zodiac killer who menaced California in the late sixties and early seventies, would be a moody character study, all ominous texture, smoggy chase scenes, and desperate anger à la Fincher’s 1995 thriller, Se7en (that movie where Gwyneth Paltrow’s head gets chopped off), or even worse, Fincher’s awful 1997 effort The Game. Most Hollywood suspense films–Fincher’s included–propel themselves on chase sequences, meaningless yelling, and overstated light and music queues that seem to scream “this is the part where you feel tense.” Zodiac, however, eschews all of these often vacuous tropes in favor of simply telling a story.
In today’s issue of Slate, Elbert Ventura points out in his write-up of thedirector’s cut DVD of Zodiac that the film is “a cop epic without a single shootout, a serial-killer flick in which all the blood is shed in the first act, and a taut procedural in which the case is never solved. In fact, it’s one of the most unsatisfying thrillers you’ll ever see—which is precisely how Fincher intended it.” Ventura’s review is fantastic, and I highly recommend reading it. He discusses the underlying politics of Zodiac, arguing that the film champions due process over vigilante “justice,” an important position to reaffirm in an age of Jack Bauerisms and actual debates over what constitutes torture.
What I really enjoyed about the film wasn’t so much its sense of values (something I honestly only realized after Ventura’s review), but the fact that the story was told without the intrusions of the personal lives of the principals involved as some kind of dramatic back story. Too often, Hollywood feels the need to muddy a perfectly good story with an unnecessary secondary plot about the personal conflict that the dramatic action in the main plot creates for its protagonists. Zodiac seems to understand that the obsessive hunt for the Zodiac killer is a source of personal conflict for the characters. To be sure, wives are annoyed with husbands, family duties are overlooked, and characters have substance abuse problems. However, Fincher is never tempted to exploit these “issues” for dramatic fodder. Instead, what might’ve served as a dramatic back drop in a standard Hollywood movie becomes little more than a character tic.
Too bad that Zodiac was a flop. There should be more Hollywood thrillers like this, films unafraid to simply tell a great story, even if that story doesn’t have gunslinging heroes or damsels in distress, even if the bad guy gets away. Check it out on DVD.
So. Yes. Well. OK. With holiday rehab served and “exhaustion” surmounted, Biblioklept is now back in production for the ’08. A few things:
2008, you might’ve heard, is an election year. Biblioklept’s official position is that all career politicians are scoundrels in the pocket of corporations. But. We do love Ralph Nader, and he’s come out in support of South Carolina pretty boy John Edwards. So maybe there’s something to that.
By our reckoning, Tim Burton hasn’t made a good movie since 1999’s Sleepy Hollow or a great movie since 1994’s Ed Wood. Finally though, his adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street marks a return to excellence. Why aren’t there more musical horror films? Go see this film in the theater.
Speaking of musical Stephens, Stephin Merritt’s Magnetic Fields will unleash their new album Distortion on January 15th. We weren’t crazy about 2004’s i, but Distortion marks a return to a more straightforward pop sound with plenty of (surprise) distortion. We’re really digging this album. Check out a few of the tracks for yourself.
And yes, this is still a blog about books. Look out for upcoming reviews of R. Crumb’s Kafka biography, Eggers’s What is the What, stuff from Chris Ware, a few short story collections, and a collection of William Blake’s work. Also, we haven’t abandoned our 50 Guitarists series or the Alphabet Soup project. So there’s that. Anyway. Biblioklept will be back in full-scale, proper review mode next week. In the meantime, check out Bibliokid for random daily Internet detritus.
Forms: 7 hogmynae, 8 hagmane, -menai, 8-9 hagmena, -menay, (hagman heigh), hogmanay, (9 hogmena, -menay, -maney, hanganay). [Of obscure history, noted only from 17th c. App. of French origin: see note below.]
The name given in Scotland (and some parts of the north of England) to the last day of the year, also called Cake-day; the gift of an oatmeal cake, or the like, which children expect, and in some parts systematically solicit, on that day; the word shouted by children calling at friends’ houses and soliciting this customary gift.
c1680 [see b]. 1693Scotch Presbyt. Eloq. (1738) 120 It is ordinary among some Plebeians in the South of Scotland, to go about from Door to Door upon New-Year’s Eve, crying Hagmane. 1790Gentl. Mag. LX. I. 499/1 Concerning the origin of the expression Hagman Heigh. Ibid., In..Scotland, and in the North of England, till very lately, it was customary for every body to make and receive presents amongst their friends on the eve of the new year, which present was called an Hagmenay. Ibid. II. 616/2 On the last night of the old year (peculiarly called Hagmenai). 1792Caledonian Mercury 2 Jan. (Jam.), The cry of Hogmanay Trololay is of usage immemorial in this country. 1805J. NICOLPoems I. 27 (Jam.) The cottar weanies, glad an’ gay..Sing at the doors for hogmanay. 1825BROCKETT s.v. Hagmena, The poor children in Newcastle, in expectation of their hogmena, go about from house to house knocking at the doors, singing their carols, and [saying] Please will you give us wor hogmena. 1826-41R. CHAMBERSPop. Rhymes Scot. (1858) 295 The children on coming to the door, cry Hogmanay! which is in itself a sufficient announcement of their demands. Ibid. 296 Cries appropriate to the morning of Hogmanay..Get up, goodwife, and shake your feathers, And dinna think that we are beggars; For we are bairns come out to play, Get up and gie’s our hogmanay. 1827HONETable-Bk. I. 7 The Hagman Heigh is an old custom observed in Yorkshire on new year’s eve. 1830SCOTTJrnl. II. 360 We spent our Hogmanay pleasantly enough. 1884St. James’s Gaz. 27 Dec. 6/1 Seasonable mummery..was reserved for Hogmanay. 1890Scott. Antiq. June 40 This is the sort of thing they used to sing as their Hagmena Song in Yorkshire. 1893HESLOPNorthumb. Gloss. s.v., In North Northumberland the hogmanay is a small cake given to children on Old Year’s Day; or the spice bread and cheese, with liquor, given away on the same day. 1897E. W. B. NICHOLSONGolspie 100-108.
b.attrib. and Comb., as hogmanay cake, day, night, concert, song, etc.
c1680 in Law Mem. 191 note [Protest of the Gibbites] They solemnly renounce..Pasch-Sunday, Hallow-even, Hogmynae-night, Valentine’s even [etc.]. 1826-41R. CHAMBERSPop. Rhymes Scot. (1858) 295 A particular individual..has frequently resolved two bolls of [oat]meal into hogmanay cakes. 1864BURTONScot Abr. I. v. 297 The eve that ushers in the new year is called in Scotland Hogmanay Night. 1897Westm. Gaz. 21 Dec. 6/3 On New Year’s Eve there is to be a grand Hogmanay concert for the special benefit of patriotic Scots in London.”
Thanks to Bobby Tomorrowland for hipping me to Tumblr. This is probably the simplest, cleanest way to blog; it’s actually kind of addictive. Check out Bob’s new blogSupper’s Ready, and my new blog, Bibliokid, and then say, “Jeez, I can do better than that,” and make your own damn blog.
Earlier this year, in an interview with the AV Club, Jonathan Lethem briefly mentioned that he was working on “kind of an emo comic book” for Marvel Comics. The first issue of that comic–part one of a ten issue run–came out back in October, prompting me to go to a comic book store–something that I haven’t done in years. Lethem’s Omega the Unknown is essentially an update of the original Omega the Unknown series, written by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes with art by Jim Mooney. The original ten issue run was published by Marvel Comics twenty years ago.
Lethem’s Omega the Unknown centers on robotically erudite teenager Alex Island and his new life after the bizarre death of his parents (who turn out to be–gasp!–robots). Alex has a strange (and still unexplained in the first three issues) relationship with a superhero who doesn’t speak, but who seems to be watching over him, protecting him from alien androids who are out to get him. Also watching over him after his parents’ deaths are a callow young nurse and a cynical social worker. All the while, local Brooklyn “superhero” The Mink tries to figure out how he can turn this new superhero and his robot villains into an opportunity for more publicity.
I haven’t read Marvel comics in over 15 years, but Omega the Unknown is quite a bit better than even the best comics I remember reading in the late eighties/early nineties (um, Chris Claremont’s X-books). Still, despite its introspection, lack of huge splash pages or silly, purposeless fights, Omega is deeply entrenched in superhero terrain: this isn’t an indie comic. Also, I was able to wait a week between reading issues two and three, even though I had both of them in my possession–compare this to a “superhero” comics like Alan Moore’s Watchmen, which I had to read in one sitting.
Farel Dalrymple’s art is fantastic, especially given Marvel’s current penchant for anime-inspired overly-muscled cartooning. Dalrymple’s figures recall many of my favorite artists, capturing the quintessential stark simplicity of Jack Kirby’s squarish hulks and the wild energy of early John Romita Jr. coupled with the attention and detail to line Art Adams always puts into his illustrations.
I’ll continue to pick up the issues of Omega the Unknown, but so far, it’s hardly essential Lethem, or, for that matter, essential comic reading. Still, for now, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Time to round up all the awful people of 2007. This list is in no way definitive, and it’s barely in hierarchal order, but I think it’s sound enough. Just like last year’s list (for the record, everyone on that list was also horrible in 2007), the miscreants represented are limited to Americans only–there are simply too many assholes out there to take on the whole world.
10. Michael Vick:
Organizing the killing of dogs for sport and entertainment–and to make money–makes you a complete asshole.
9. The multitude of vacuous, soulless, slutty “celebrities,” whose malfeasance and just plain general dumbness passes for “culture” these days:
We’re not going to name them, because we’re sick of them and so are you. Still, coverage of their worthless exploits continues to metastasize like cancer. Perhaps we should blame the American people? Nah…this blog is pro-America! Which brings us to an attack on–
8. The Democratic Party:
The Democratic Party has spent this entire decade as impotent mugwumps, a collection of scaredy-cat politicians who fell into every trap the well-organized Republicans set for them. Even with the Congressional and Senate majority, they still couldn’t manage to do anything to stop the steady growing institutionalizing of a stark divide between the haves and the have-nots.
7. The Republican Party and every fool who still supports them:
I’m still amazed to run into Bush supporters. I got over my liberal outrage a few years ago (it became unsustainable in the face of the sheer ludicrous evil perpetuated by the Neocons in the name of “security”), and my liquid rage has now gelled into detached cynicism. Still, when I encounter any “Republicans” who defend the Bush administration, I love to ask them why they support a monster who has so dramatically increased government spending, as well as the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. The average Republican seems to respond only in hypothetical rhetorical questions–“You think Gore would’ve done a better job?” or worse, points out that Bush was the “moral” candidate (uh…Katrina?). Still, I get the sad feeling that these chumps were fooled by one of the most organized political efforts in American history to consolidate power and revoke civil liberties.
6. OJ Simpson:
Speaking of hypothetical rhetoric, before he was roughing up sports memorabilia dealers in Las Vegas, OJ Simpson was hard at work getting If I Did It: Confessions of the Murderer published. According to a Fox press release (there was going to be a tell-all interview aired; for once moral outrage trumped poor taste): “O.J. Simpson, in his own words, tells for the first time how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible for the crimes. In the two-part event, Simpson describes how he would have carried out the murders he has vehemently denied committing for over a decade.”
Wow. What a fucking asshole.
5. Alberto Gonzales:
Gonzales was either lying when he repeatedly said he didn’t or couldn’t recall any details about the 2006 firing of eight US attorneys for their political persuasions (um, they weren’t “loyal Bushies“), or he was just grossly incompetent in his position as US Attorney General. It took him months to resign, and even then, the Bush administration continued to support him.
4. Nancy Grace, Bill O’Reilly, and every other douchebag who perpetuates sensationalist, divisive nonsense under the guise of “journalism”:
This brand of yellow journalism has been around forever, but in recent years its proliferation has become unbearable. Even worse, it’s starting to infect mainstream journalism, which increasingly tells “stories,” instead of simply reporting the news. Plus, Nancy Grace is an awful bitch.
3. Dick Cheney:
Make no mistake, Dick Cheney’s evil hasn’t fallen off any–sure he came in at #2 last year, but, as I said at the beginning of this list, the rankings are somewhat arbitrary. I suppose he got a little bit of cred this year for not shooting any old men in the face (at least none that we know of). Evil and secretive, Cheney believes that Americans are idiots, sheep who need to be sheparded.
2. The perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacre, and every other asshole who feels like mass murder will make them famous and heal their sick spirit:
I won’t publish his name or even link to it, for that matter. These people want fame and recognition, a glory after death, to be remembered and recognized, and I don’t wish to be part of that. But still. This guy was clearly one of the worst–if not the worst–persons of 2007. These types of killings keep happening again and again, and I am in no way discounting or ignoring the other slayings this year–some as recent as last week–but this particular massacre is the worst school shooting in American history. I am still shocked that this tragedy never sparked a full-scale debate leading to gun control reform. Hell, gun control isn’t even a major issue in the 2008 presidential election.
Here are the names of the victims (for a detailed list, go here): Ryan Clark (22), Emily Hilscher (19), Liviu Librescu (76), Minal Panchal (26), G. V. Loganathan (53), Jarrett Lane (22), Brian Bluhm (25), Matthew Gwaltney (24), Jeremy Herbstritt (27), Partahi Lumbantoruan (34), Daniel O’Neil (22), Juan Ortiz (26), Julia Pryde (23), Waleed Shaalan (32), Christopher James Bishop (35), Lauren McCain (20), Michael Pohle Jr. (23), Maxine Turner (22), Nicole White (20), Jocelyne Couture-Nowak (49), Ross Alameddine (20), Austin Cloyd (18), Daniel Perez Cueva (21), Caitlin Hammaren (19), Rachael Hill (18), Matthew La Porte (20), Henry Lee (20), Erin Peterson (18), Mary Read (19), Reema Samaha (18), Leslie Sherman (20), Kevin Granata (45).
1. George W. Bush:
I may now anticipate a response on the order of: “OK, Biblioklept–Bush is awful, but he didn’t murder 33 people in cold blood–what makes him #1 on your list?” Here’s the deal: although Bush hasn’t technically murdered anyone, his war has led to the deaths of thousands and thousands of people, and his radically conservative policies on everything from environmental protection to child health care will have long term detrimental effects on American society for decades to come. He claims that history will judge his presidency, and I believe him: Bush will go down in history as the worst president since Richard Nixon, and will no doubt be judged even more harshly.
Since we’ve already had our say about the best books of ’07, here’s what some other clowns thought:
The New York Times agreed with us that Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke was fantastic. They also give props to Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, the reading of which is high on our “to do” list. In their non-fiction superlatives, they highlight music critic Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise, as do the a couple of the folks over at Slate–although Slate‘s list fails to recognize Tree of Smoke (the book is seriously seriously good good good). The editors of Publisher’s Weekly also cite Johnson’s novel as one of ’07’s best, and they’re one of the few sites out there to mention Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. I’ve just started listening to the audiobook version of Falling Man, and I should be able to weigh in before ’07 is kaput. There’s a better-than-you-would-think-it-would-be write-up at Time of the top-ten graphic novels of 2007. The School Library Journal effectively organizes its list by grade level, a boon to teachers and parents everywhere. That bastion of literary criticism, The Economist, seems to think that Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was something special, although we know better. The writers over at theVillage Voice are sensible enough to append the adjective “favorite” instead of “best,” perhaps excusing them from also giving a nod to Chabon’s book (although their mistaking Miranda July for an author cannot be forgiven). When you get sick of reading other people’s list, head over to Book Covers and check out the Best Book Shelves of 2007 (the images in this post are from said list).
Not only does the end of each year bring ugly barefaced consumerism, nightmare traffic, and hellish stress, it invariably leads up to oodles of lists, hierarchies, rankings, and tabulations. We here at Biblioklept are not above marshaling the cultural detritus of the year into our own list, as follows. But before we even get to all that, I have to say that The Year of the Golden Pig (whether it was really a Golden Pig year or not) was a wonderful and special year for me, thanks to the birth of my lovely little girl. So: very good year. Best Fiction Book I read in 2007
This is really tough, because I read so many great books this year. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road really stuck with me, and although I thought the end was a cop-out, I found myself thinking about the book constantly and rereading it in bits and pieces. For sheer entertainment, I also really enjoyed Chris Bachelder’s US! I also read or reread most of James Joyce’s oeuvre, and I really did enjoy Ulysses, despite the torture it put me through, and I can’t leave it out of this group. Still, I have to give the award to a book published last year, Chris Adrian’s astounding and astonishing The Children’s Hospital, a book so good that I actually had to stand up to read it at times.
Best Nonfiction Book I read in 2007
Although Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace’s “sequel” to his hilarious collection of essays A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, isn’t quite as funny as that earlier book of essays, it shows a maturation of scope and a control of language that I would’ve thought impossible ten years ago, simply because DFW has been such a master of words from the outset of his writing career. Great book.
Best Book Published in 2007 that I Read in 2007
Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smokewas the best book I read all year, although it’s only fair to point out that I listened to the audiobook–maybe I should put quotation marks around read, or just use the verb listen instead. In fact almost all of the books published in 2007 that I…uh…”read” were audiobooks, including two of the bigger releases this year, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet. Which brings us to…
Most Disappointing Book of 2007
Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet was pretty awful.
Best Movie I Saw in the Theater in 2007
Tie: Children of Men (yeah, I know it came out in 2006–I saw it in 2007 though) and Superbad. If you were to make a graph of emotional matrices, these two films would probably fit quite comfortably at ends opposite of each other. Still, they have plenty in common–great stories, emotional impact, and most importantly, they meet the ultimate criterion for an excellent movie: they start out great and only get better.
Best Movie I Saw on DVD in 2007
David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE. Watch it at night in the dark, preferably alone, preferably in the cold.
Most Disappointing Movie of 2007
Although it was by no means bad, I was disappointed in the Coen’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. It was a good movie–Javier Badem was fantastic, great pacing and tone–but still it didn’t blow me away like, say, Fargo or Blood Simple or Miller’s Crossing did. Ditto Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn. Chalk it up to hyperbolic expectations, I guess. Maybe I need to watch these films again on DVD and reconsider.
Best Album of 2007
This is always a tough one, and there were plenty of great albums that came out this year. Late in the year I found myself unexpectedly in love with The National’s Boxer, a serious album that’s still growing on me like a weird moss. Battles’s Mirrored was superb; I found myself listening to James Blackshaw’s The Cloud of Unknowing whenever I wanted my mind to mush out; Menomena’s Friend and Foe was the perfect soundtrack for a long drive; the psychedelic progrock of Frog Eyes’s Tears of the Valedictorian made me itch in a good way; and with Strawberry Jam, Animal Collective finally let us know what they were singing. Fiery Furnaces, my favorite band, put out Widow City, their most “rock” album to date, a great collection of songs about widows and hieroglyphics and mysticism and bored Spanish royals and automatic husbands and perverts in Japanese slippers. But if I had to pick just one album of the year, it would have to be Panda Bear’s Person Pitch, a gorgeous pastiche of loveliness that I consistently put on repeat. Bring your own harmonies and sing along.
Best Single of 2007
Just when I’d given up on Outkast–what with Big Boi doing that awful Caddyshack ripoff and Andre busy with his silly cartoon–they show up on UGK’s “International Players Anthem,” easily the best track of the year. From Andre’s opening meditation on the virtues of commitment to the final verse’s warnings about Paul McCartney’s messy divorce, this song is pure magic. The death of Pimp C earlier this week adds a darker shade to the poignancy and sweet nostalgia of “International Players Anthem.”
I haven’t been interested in Blonde Redhead in years, really–chalk it up to a sense of propriety stemming from following them since their earliest (and best) albums (and 7″s!)–but 23 was a dreadful bore. Ditto the Sea and Cake’s Everybody: even the addition of a few fuzzy edges couldn’t muddle the Chicago quartet’s vanilla smoothiness. But it was Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, Devendra Banhart’s follow up to 2005’s Cripple Crow that stood out as the biggest disappointment. Banhart’s unfocused, overblown, tossed-off collection of songs copped riffs left and right without adding anything new or inventive. My wife reviewed the album best while riding in the car with me: “Why are you listening to The Doors?”
Best Network TV Show of 2007
I love NBC’s 30 Rock so much that I wanna take it out behind the middle school and get it pregnant.
Best Cable TV Show of 2007
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: bad awful people doing rotten awful things. Charlie is a personal hero of mine.
Best New TV Show of 2007
Flight of the Conchords is hilarious. That’s lousy writing/reviewing, but it’s true: the show is just really really funny. You should watch it. You’ll like it a lot (unless there’s a yawning abyss where your soul should be…)
Best Out of Control Local News Appearance of 2007
Two way tie: Tracy Morgan–
vs. Tracy Morgan–
Best Abs of 2007
With a body like that, Putin can curtail my civil liberties any time!
Best Makeover of 2007
When he’s not terrorizing bands in the studio, making awesome Christmas albums, or just having a few tequila drinks with a lady friend, Phil Spector takes time out to make sure that he’s looking fine and dandy like cotton candy.
Most Enjoyable Blog of 2007
I’ve looked forward to and greatly enjoyed each entry in Nathan Rabin’s ambitious project My Year of Flops over at the Onion AV Club. Is it too much to ask him to do this again in 2008?
I finished Denis Johnson’s sprawling Vietnam War epic Tree of Smoke the same weekend that I finished James Joyce’s Ulysses. I managed to do this thanks to BBC America’s fantastic audio book version of Tree of Smoke, read by Will Patton–there’s simply no other way I would’ve managed to read both books. After finishing Tree of Smoke, that special depression reserved for only the best of books set in (you know that feeling–where the book you looked forward to every day is now over, and you feel a little sad and want more). I immediately started listening to it again (after I finished Ulysses I simply felt exhausted–Molly Bloom’s infamous monologue was fantastic (and sexy!), and I read it in one sitting, but still…the book inspires a special fatigue. More on all of this in a future post. I only bring the two up together as they are both very long books I finished this weekend; without pretense or shame, I attest that I enjoyed Johnson’s book over Joyce’s).
I plan to buy and reread (not sure if reread is the right verb) Tree of Smoke as soon as soon as it comes out in paperback. For now, here’s a very brief review: go buy this book and read it immediately. If you don’t have time to read it, get the 18-disc, 24 hour audiobook. Will Patton’s reading is astounding. He manages to meet and express the expansive range of voices and viewpoints in Johnson’s novel–newbie CIA spooks, double agents, overwhelmed relief workers, nihilist GIs, zealous field operatives, and more–in a way that brings the appropriate depth and personality to each character without ever being obtrusive or obnoxious (as can sometimes happen with audiobooks). Patton’s reading is on par with the best audiobook readings I’ve ever heard, and those of you who frequently listen to audiobooks know the difference this can make. He seems to fully appreciate the scope and magnitude of Johnson’s piece on Vietnam (sidenote: Patton played a bit-part in the underrated and overlooked 1999 film adaptation of Johnson’s novel-in-stories collection, Jesus’ Son).
But I’m not really doing justice to Johnson’s novel here. To call it a Vietnam war novel is like calling Prince a simple R&B artist–a facile description that doesn’t capture the subject. To be sure, it is a Vietnam war novel, but one that self-consciously riffs off of both The Ugly American and The Quiet American–with shades of Apocalypse Now to boot. At the same time, Johnson deftly injects mythology and philosophy directly into his character’s voices, into their conversations and letters, into the books they read and the papers they write, without ever once clumsily forcing a theme or motif. Unlike lesser writers, Johnson never slaps the reader in the face with all his clever ideas. Instead, all his clever ideas–meditations on colonialism, war, the minotaur myth, self-sacrifice, religion, data and analysis, love and betrayal–are part of an enthralling plot propelled by the most realistic dialog I’ve heard in a long, long time. If a better book is published in 2007, please let me know. Highly highly highly recommended.
In just over 200 black and white archival photographs, Turner Publishing Company’sHistoric Photos of Jacksonville depicts a vision of the Bold New City of the South that might surprise even native Jacksonvillians. The pictorial narrative begins around the same time as the advent of popular photography, before the Civil War (or, the War of Northern Aggression, as some old-school Jacksonvillian’s might say), and continues into the late 1960s. University of North Florida history professor Carolyn Williams’s captions provide insightful but never obtrusive explanations and commentary for the images, and her short essays before each section help to explicate the historical contexts of each of the particular periods of Jacksonville’s history into which the book. Particularly engaging are the smoke-hazed photos of the Great Fire of 1901, a devastating blaze that reduced much of the city to ashes.
Also fascinating are the post-fire/pre-WWI images of Jacksonville. These detail an overlooked period when the city was a major tourist destination boasting a burgeoning film industry. Northern travelers would flock to luxury resorts like the St. James Hotel, where native Jacksonvillian James Weldon Johnson‘s father worked. When looking at photos of the crowded streets of downtown and the busy industry of the shipyards and train stations, it’s easy to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a time that passed before you ever lived, a time before the strip malls and suburban sprawl, a time before Jacksonville looked more-or-less like Every Other Place in America.
Historic Photos of Jacksonville will look great on your coffee table or on your shelf, preferably next to James Weldon Johnson‘s outstanding autobiography, Along This Way.
I’ve loved everything I’ve read by Jonathan Lethem so far–Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, Men and Cartoons, and his essay collection, The Disappointment Artist. So, while perusing the library’s excellent collection of audiobooks for the perfect aural accompaniment for the longish drive from/to Jacksonville to/from St. Pete Beach, I was excited to discover a copy of Lethem’s new novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet, read by Lethem himself. The six and a half hour unabridged recording was just the right length to get there and back. The prospect of hearing an author read his own work is always encouraging, and I didn’t imagine I’d have a chance to read the book any time soon.
So. Well. Anyway.
About halfway through You Don’t Love Me Yet, my darling lovely wife turned to me with the most charming of smiles and said: “This isn’t a very good book.” I agreed with her sheepishly. After all, I’d been toting Lethem as a pop genius. Unfortunately, she was right. I’d been secretly waiting for the book to get good: for the characters to charm me, for the plot to intrigue me, for the writing to wow me. Instead, I was repeatedly disappointed.
The dull plot of You Don’t Love Me Yet centers around Lucinda, bassist for an “alternative” band (Lethem’s words) in LA, trying to get their shit together. Improbably, Lucinda answers phones for a living as part of an art installation complaint line. A mysterious complainer intrigues Lucinda; she ends up falling in love. She also uses the complainer’s complaints (which she recorded as part of her job) as the basis for song lyrics that somehow magically transform the band from rank amateurs to rank amateurs with something. Unfortunately, that something, that kinetic potential, is never quite explained to the novel’s audience. Additionally, the band’s music is never really adequately described (I think that some of the generic “transition music” that precedes each new chapter is supposed to inform the reader that the band is kinda Pixiesish, maybe even a little White Stripesish). Most glaringly, the complainer’s lyrics that somehow stun the band and their audience–built around phrases like “Monster Eyes” and “Astronaut Food”–are really nothing special.
Other elements of the plot that only sound interesting include: kangaroo theft, a dance party where everyone listens to their own playlists on headphones, and lots of sweaty ugly sex (Lethem seems to want You Don’t Love Me Yet to be something of a sex novel). Lethem’s characters have a tendency to prattle about ephemera, often of the pop culture stripe; this was one of my favorite elements of The Fortress of Solitude, but it’s almost unbearably cloying in You Don’t Love Me Yet, with the single exception of the guitarist Bedwin’s fascinating analysis of obscured signs (like, literal signs, posted signs, advertisements, y’know) in the background of Fritz Lang’s Human Desire.
Plot has always been a secondary consideration to rhetoric in my critique of books, and Lethem here allows a number of awful lines–pure groaners–to infiltrate his text (the worst offender: a description of the complainer attesting to his “penisy glamor”). Lethem’s writing is in no way aided by his clipped, earnest delivery. The right reader can often imbue an audiobook with the perfect cadence, delivering the story with added dimension and depth. Lethem delivers each line in one of two different and exact rhythms; by the book’s end the effect is somewhere between numbing and grating.
So yes and well yes this is something of a negative review. But. My love for Lethem is still strong. So instead of ending with a “Not recommended” (and of course I can’t recommend that you spend your precious time on You Don’t Love Me Yet), I implore you to pick up Motherless Brooklyn or The Fortress of Solitude, or, if you’re pressed for time, The Disappointment Artist. And to prove that there are no hard feelings, I vow to read Lethem’s debut novel, Gun, with Occasional Music over the Christmas break. So there.
I dare you to watch Lethem talk about his new novel (in which he calls it a “deliberately silly book,” incidentally) for fifty minutes on Youtube. I dare you!
Last year, Rick Santorum made our list of the worst people of 2006 for, among other nefarious deeds, using imagery from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as a half-assed metaphor supporting the Iraq war. Apparently, Santorum’s literary criticism has sparked a whole new approach in conservative thinking.
The new issue of Harper’s Magazine contains a section from James P. Pinkerton’s essay, “The Once and Future Christendom” (click the link to read it in full at its original publication site, The American Conservative). In this essay (which, incidentally, I highly recommend reading for a larf), Pinkerton argues that, with its declining birthrates, “Old Europe” will become Muslimized, and hence a threat to the US. Pinkerton suggests that this Muslimization is akin to Sauron and his evil horde in the land of Mordor using the Ring of Power to unite all the creatures of Middle Earth as slaves to his dark power. Not one to point out a problem and offer no solution, Pinkerton recommends that, in order to “save” Western civilization, “poor children from such countries as Argentina [be brought] home to Europe.”
In Pinkerton’s analogy, Americans are like Hobbits–simple folk who “like to smoke and drink,” but on whom “all grander forms of world-girdling intoxication are lost.” “The Hobbits just want their Shire to return to normalcy,” writes Pinkerton. For Pinkerton, “normalcy” clearly means the Hibernian/Nordic values embodied by the Hobbits, an ideology starkly contrasted in Toklien’s Middle Earth with the bestial, murderous existence of the black-skinned orcs and the savage, dark-skinned Southrons. Although I love The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, I was somewhat bothered in my post-college reading of the books by their clearly xenophobic values. Pinkerton takes these values and suggests that a whole new foreign policy be created from them: “Tolkien offers a different sort of diversity–of genuine difference, with no pretense of similarity, let alone universal equality. In his world, it is perfectly natural that all creatures great and small–the Hobbits are indeed small, around three feet high–have their own place in the chain of being.” You’ve got to love any ideology that values the great chain of being.
The part of Pinkerton’s essay that bothers me the most–and I enjoyed it tremendously, as an application of literary criticism, I must admit–is that he’s dead serious. He’s not joking. He’s for real. Furthermore, taken in conjunction with Santorum’s comments, and everything the neo-cons have achieved over the past eight years, it’s more evident than ever that the modern conservative movement in America is quite willing to use a fantasy novel published in the 1950s as a basis for not just foreign policy, but also for its ideology as to just how America is to relate to the rest of the world. And that’s not just funny, it’s also scary.
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