The publishing world today is dominated by narrow genres, which is oh-so-predictable.
Where does a fusion novel like THE TOWER fit? THE TOWER is mystery, literary, political, pop, romance, thriller, sports, and likely much else. It doesn’t narrow itself. It aims to present contemporary America in all its complexity and madness. Buy the ebook at Kindle Store or Nook Books and find out.
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Kevin Brockmeier, George Pelecanos, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, David Peace, Myla Goldberg, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Michael Downs’The Greatest Show is an impressive short fiction collection debut. These ten interconnected stories about the horrific 1944 Hartford, Connecticut circus fire work well as standalone narratives, but taken as a whole can be read as a powerful novel.
Sabina Murray wrote of the book:
“Though each story stands alone in scope and power, the larger portrait of a community bound and propelled by fate–specifically, a catastrophic circus fire–is a stellar, magical achievement. The Greatest Show is a fantastically conceived, compelling book.”
Stream a Spotify playlist of these tunes. If you don’t have Spotify yet, sign up for the free service.
In his own words, here is Michael Downs’ Book Notes music playlist for his short story collection, The Greatest Show:
To that great ringmaster in the sky, the God of the Big Top, I’d like to say, “Thank you for Mr. Curtis Eller–that banjo-picking, yodeling, punk-folk ex-circus juggler who sings about Tammany Hall and Joe Louis and John Wilkes Booth.” Without him, and in particular without his album, Wirewalkers and Assassins, I couldn’t have made a cohesive playlist. With him, I think it kind of works.
My book, The Greatest Show, links stories via my birthplace, Hartford, Connecticut, and its famous circus-tent fire, which consumed a Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey big top during a matinee performance on July 6, 1944, and killed 168 people. The stories mix clowns with flames and scars that don’t heal; points of view shift story by story, and ten stories happen over the course of six decades. I’m biased, and it took nearly a decade of work, but I think the stories add up to a unified whole. But a playlist to reflect all that? In a few weeks? I struggled.
Then I discovered Curtis Eller and his song “Hartford Circus Fire, 1944.” Off the same album, his “Plea from the Aerialist’s Wife” includes the haunting refrain “Won’t you deliver this old heart from the circus fire?” One turn through the tracks, and I was smitten. It seemed Curtis, without having ever read my book, had provided its soundtrack.
But first, a Big Band memory from 1941 …
Ania
“Jersey Bounce,” Benny Goodman, Benny Goodman’s Greatest Hits
In this story, readers meet a young Polish immigrant who takes her three-year-old boy, Teddy, to the circus on the day the fire will change thousands of lives. But in an earlier scene, we see her at work as a maid who comes upon her employers in a moment of love and anguish, and on the radio nearby plays Benny Goodman’s instrumental hit. “Jersey Bounce” establishes the book’s–and Hartford’s–pre-Pearl Harbor swagger, yet the keening trumpet at the end suggests grief to come.
Ex-Husband, Years Removed
“Hartford Circus Fire, 1944,” Curtis Eller’s American Circus, Wirewalkers and Assassins
At a show in Baltimore where I live, Curtis asked the crowd to choose the next song he’d play: “Beautiful or Angry? Angry or beautiful?” The crowd called for angry, and he played this nifty, sad waltz. “Hartford Circus Fire, 1944” fits this story about a man in mourning for a person with whom he is still angry, a beautiful ex-wife who died in the circus fire. “A panic swept through the big top,” Curtis sings, “Stars and Stripes Forever, and those screams / and no one in Hartford is sleeping easy / because the circus lives here in our dreams.”
Ellen at the End of Summer
“Three is a Magic Number,” Bob Dorough, The Best of Schoolhouse Rock
Ellen Patterson wants children, but her body only gives her miscarriage after miscarriage. On a summer day in 1947, she admits to her husband her impossible desire for a boy she babysits, Ania’s son, Teddy. In this story, he’s five-years-old and bearing a body criss-crossed with circus-fire scars. The story ends on that same picnic afternoon, several decades before “Three is a Magic Number” became part of children’s Saturday-cartoon mornings. But it’s a song that makes five-year-olds dance. And if childless Ellen listened, she might have felt a pang of hopelessness at the lines, “A man and a woman had a little baby / yes, they did / They had three in the family / that’s a magic number.”
Son of Captain America
“Firing Line” The Allman Brothers Band, Hittin’ the Note
Two neighborhood friends come of age in this story, testing limits, figuring out whether they’re heroes or villains, and learning that sometimes they’re both. With Derek Truck’s riffs setting the tone, I can hear the story’s main character, Franco, singing to nasty Dominic, “I’ve known you since you been born / raising hell even as a child / Nothing’s changed since that day / You’re still out running wild … Change you’re life’s direction / Get off the Firing Line.”
Added bonus: A crowd of elephants dominate the album’s cover art.
Mrs. Liszak
“Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water
It’s 1980, and the star of this story is Ania’s working class neighbor. Suzanne Randall is a smart, artistic 16-year-old girl, whose mother has died and whose father in his grief has abandoned his family. She needs a bridge over her troubles, but has no idea how to build one, and those offered to her she burns. She’d relish the over-the-top melancholy of this song, listening to it over and over in the dark, feeling that “pain is all around” and fearing that she’s going to keep losing forever.
At the Beach
“So Nice,” Bebel Gilberto, Tanto Tempo
Teddy re-appears decades later, except now he’s Ted, a guy in his early 40s on a beach vacation where he’s been set up by friends to meet Rosa, a thirty-something lawyer from North Carolina. It’s a story that conveys, I hope, the practicality and sexiness of love between grown-ups. You know. What Bebel sings about.
Elephant
“When You Wish Upon a Star,” Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Cliff Edwards), Disney’s Greatest
In the neighborhood bar where “Elephant” takes place, a fellow sits in a corner playing this tune on his recorder in exchange for coins. Meanwhile, a teenaged-Ted listens as his father tells him a story that begins, “I once shot a circus elephant. Through the eye.”
Boxing Snowmen
“September When it Comes,” Johnny Cash and Roseanne Cash, The Legend: Family and Friends
This story, like the song, is a duet, shifting between the points of view of an aging wife and husband. Nick, once a boxer but now stroke-addled, yearns for those days when he could destroy things. Confused though he sometimes is, Nick would understand, with the clarity of a left jab, the words sung by the Man in Black: “I cannot move the mountain now, / I can no longer run. / I cannot be who I was then. / In a way I never was.”
The Greatest Show
“Je Te Veux,” Eric Satie, performed by Pascal Roge, Three Gymnopédies & Other Piano Works
Rosa and Ted are now married, and to celebrate his 60th birthday, she buys him tickets to the circus. But for reasons of national calamity, the circus cancels its performance. After learning Ted’s circus history, a few performers agree to give him, at least, the semblance of a show. As they juggle and parade, a roustabout chooses music to accompany them that is “an awkward tune, one sad and off-balance, teetering, uncertain, played as if it resisted playing but had no choice.” The story doesn’t name the song, but between you and me, it’s Satie’s “Je Te Veux”.
History Class
“Plea of the Aerialists’s Wife,” Curtis Eller’s American Circus, Wirewalkers and Assassins
This story, about Ted and memory and forgetting, is the finale. So I’ll let Curtis end the show, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, by singing:
“Won’t you deliver this old heart / from the circus fire? / Don’t walk away and let it burn.”
Michael Downs and The Greatest Show links:
the author’s website
the book’s blog
video trailer for the book
Contrary Magazine review
The Rumpus review
The City Wire profile of the author
Maryland Morning interview with the author
The Missouri Review essay by the author
also at Largehearted Boy:
other Book Notes playlists (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlists
List of Online “Best Books of 2011″ Lists
List of 2011 Year-End Online Music Lists
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
52 Books, 52 Weeks (weekly book reviews)
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (weekly comics highlights)
Daily Downloads (free and legal daily mp3 downloads)
guest book reviews
Largehearted Word (weekly new book highlights)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film’s soundtracks)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from the week’s CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Kevin Brockmeier, George Pelecanos, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, David Peace, Myla Goldberg, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Imran Ahmad’s The Perfect Gentleman: A Muslim Boy Meets the West is an entertaining and insightful memoir about growing up as a Pakistani immigrant in Great Britain. Ahmad handles heavy issues like racism and culture clashes with deft and often humorous prose.
Macleans.ca wrote of the book:
“This laugh-out-loud book has a deceptively simple structure, with each chapter representing a school year of his life, including summer vacation. It doesn’t feel like a literary crutch because it reflects Ahmad’s orderly, rational character. The complexity of his spiritual searching—and his desire for better cars—increases with each chapter. Funny stories about his Jaguar XJS and crushes on girls keep things light, but the book’s real value is in Ahmad’s explanation of misunderstandings between secular Westerners and Christian culture and the multi-faceted Muslim world. A feminist and a peacemaker, our “perfect gentleman” has this reader impatient for the sequel.”
Stream a Spotify playlist of these tunes. If you don’t have Spotify yet, sign up for the free service.
In his own words, here is Imran Ahmad’s Book Notes music playlist for his memoir, The Perfect Gentleman: A Muslim Boy Meets the West:
The Perfect Gentleman is my memoir about growing up as a Muslim of Pakistani origin in Britain in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Although I use the medium of a memoir as a vehicle for discussions about a diverse spectrum of subjects, these discussions are woven into the narrative very lightly, so as not to weigh it down. I have had feedback from many people of all backgrounds that they could completely relate to virtually all the experiences related, allowing me to conclude that – whatever our ethnicity, religion, culture or nationality – there is a core set of human experience which is common to us all.
“The Night Chicago Died” by Paper Lace
From a very early age, I was conscious that I was on the side of ‘good’, and vehemently opposed to corruption and injustice. Somewhat naively, with the simple vision of one with little real-world experience, I was always a supporter of the police – who were obviously on the side of good, of law and order – and I was opposed to criminals, who were obviously bad people. This song is very intense and deeply moving, being about the human cost of the war of good vs bad. I was too naïve to realize that the Chicago police department of the 1930s was probably only marginally less corrupt than Al Capone and his criminal gang.
As a child, I was very aware of the concept of orphans, and so very worried about losing either or both of my parents – something which this song poignantly touches on: “…And I asked someone who said, Bout a hundred cops are dead.”
But there is something else very bittersweet about this song, which reminded me of my Indian-subcontinental origins and that I was not a regular person in western society. In the song, the narrator’s father eventually arrives home: “… and he kissed my mama’s face, and he brushed her tears away.”
This was something that never happened. I never once saw my father kiss my mother, not even on the cheek. This does not mean that he didn’t love her (I know that he did) and that he didn’t do this behind closed doors (I have two brothers, so they must have done it a few times), but it was an absolute rule that people from India and Pakistan never ever showed romantic affection in public. That was something vulgar that only white people did.
I believe that one of the factors driving an abusive attitude towards women in certain societies is that children in those cultures never witness affection between men and women, not even at home (never mind in the street). They never witness the holding of hands, or a simple kiss. So how would they understand the concepts of affection, of physical intimacy? If they never witness such simple acts of love, then they may become incapable of such expression themselves.
I think there should be a comfortable middle ground of non-vulgar physical interaction by which we can demonstrate to children that love and affection are perfectly okay.
James Bond theme by Monty Norman
Not strictly a song, but probably one of the world’s most recognizable tracks. When I was growing up as a Pakistani Muslim in Britain, I was aware that I was expected to behave very differently from regular people – but in reality I really just wanted to belong. This desire for belonging creates a need for role models, and the role model I chanced upon was James Bond – for a number of reasons. He was the ultimate establishment figure, which meant that he totally belonged.
When I discovered the original James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, I found them to be utterly compelling, exciting, erotic. (This was very bad timing, as I was supposed to be studying for my exams to gain admission to medical school.) And I discovered that I had a particular connection to James Bond – a quite unexpected one. It was his physical description. Fleming describes James Bond as having a dark face, black hair (parted on the left), long black eyebrows, and a long straight nose. He was describing me!
So with such a perfect match to his description, in my mind I could perceive myself as very similar to James Bond – apart from the vodka, the cigarettes and the women. (Only one of those items has ever appealed to me.)
There are advantages to having a desire for this persona. I tend to exercise more, keep myself fit, shave regularly and generally look presentable. I always favor an attaché case over the more contemporary “gentleman’s handbag.” I never wear a patterned tie with a patterned shirt. I always have a wonderfully brisk cold shower after my hot shower – the colder, the better (you should try it – it makes you feel great!).
Even today, whenever I do anything vaguely James-Bond-like – such as checking into a luxury hotel; boarding an aircraft in the front section; picking up a smart rental car – I hear the James Bond theme start playing in my head. I probably need to see a psychiatrist.
“Late in the Evening” by Simon and Garfunkel
Back in 1981, at the age of 19, I transitioned very suddenly from a boys’ grammar school to a university in Scotland, where there girls everywhere. To be away from home and free! (Although I wasn’t really that free, due to all my programmed constraints and inhibitions.) And I met a slightly irritating and very scruffy fellow called Milton, who had a regional accent. But he was very friendly towards me, and we often sat in his terribly untidy room, drinking coffee, whilst he strummed his guitar or played music tapes. He introduced me to the songs of Paul Simon, both as a solo artist and as “Simon and Garfunkel.”
At that time, my major preoccupation was how to impress girls in general and one girl in particular, Janice, whom (I believed) I had fallen head-over-heels in love with. (I think the novelty factor of meeting girls for the first time was having a far greater impact than I could comprehend at that age. I now understand that there are different kinds of girls, and they have different personalities, and what’s below the surface is far more important than the superficial beauty which first catches the eye. Duh! You already know this, don’t you?)
Anyway, this song has a really exhilarating, high energy beat and a heady exuberance, and in the lyrics Paul Simon proclaims that when he first met this particular girl, he said “I’m gonna get that girl no matter what I do.”
And that was exactly how I felt about Janice. (It’s all in The Perfect Gentleman.)
“I Am a Rock” by Simon and Garfunkel
So, it didn’t go well with Janice. I completely put my heart on a tray for her, and she rejected it, with that that cutting, archetypal line: “I think we should just be friends.”
How could I have so misread the signs? We had spent so much time together, she had come to my room a lot, we had been to see Alien (on something which I thought resembled a date), she even liked James Bond novels. I thought she was perfect. I knew (or so I thought) that I would never meet another girl like her. Her cold words stabbed me in the heart – that I had completely misinterpreted everything and our “relationship” was all in my head.
It was December, nearly Christmas, approaching the end of our first semester, and with the exams just days away. I was woefully unprepared for the exams, having been too distracted by the Janice project. This being Scotland, it had snowed heavily, and the snow was still thick on the ground.
“I Am a Rock” was extremely poignant as I listened to it, because I was also looking out of my window at a “softly fallen silent shroud of snow” and feeling a pain in my chest that was so intense, I thought my ribs were going to break. To me this is the ultimate song which describes that melancholic heavy ache of a broken heart.
Over thirty years later, I’ve just had my heart broken again recently. And you know, that pain in the chest doesn’t get any easier with age or practice. In fact, it’s worse now, because the love I experienced wasn’t delusional – it was real (and mutual). But to truly experience authentic love, you must have the courage to be vulnerable – and that means there is a risk one must accept of feeling such pain.
Once again I have experienced an authentic “I Am a Rock” state of pain and melancholy. The only difference is that I’m currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – and there’s never any snow on the ground outside my window.
“Duncan” by Paul Simon
The Janice saga didn’t end there. She started seeing a Neanderthal man who used to park his car illegally under my window, whenever he went to see her (Janice and I were in the same hall of residence). This meant it was always obvious to me when he had spent the night. This agonizing observation used to drive me insane.
How could she possibly have fallen for such a caveman? He completely lacked my refinement, he always wore denim and leather (like Fonzie in Happy Days), and his regional accent was so thick, it was impossible to understand him.
The song “Duncan” begins with the narrator complaining that he’s in a motel room, trying to sleep – but the sounds of the couple next door incessantly making love are keeping him awake. This always made me think of Janice and the Neanderthal man. Okay, I couldn’t actually hear them making love, but I could imagine it. It was so depressing.
The worst time that I heard this song, I had the tape on auto reverse, and I was up all night cramming for a Chemistry exam the next morning, which I had completely neglected. The combination of the exam, my lack of sleep, my general state of unhappiness about Janice, and this song – all these combined to create one of the most memorably miserable nights of my life. Thanks Paul!
“Last Christmas” by George Michael
In our final year, there was an amazing development. Janice finally fell into my arms. I always knew it would happen! I always knew that I was the one for her.
It was just before Christmas, snow was thick on the ground, the end of semester was approaching, and I had persuaded Janice to have dinner with me. She agreed, and it went incredibly well. We ended up in her room afterwards, and she let me kiss her – quite a lot. As I walked away from my first such experience, I was absolutely elated. Janice was my girlfriend!
The next morning, I went to see her, to plan our day together. It didn’t go quite as I expected. She was as cold as ice. It was just a bit of fun. We were NOT in a relationship. Why did I always have to take things so seriously?
I tried to salvage some self-esteem, but it was a lost cause. As I stumbled outside, it was snowing heavily. I wandered around campus in a daze, not really sure what I was doing. In one of the campus shops, this song (which I’d never heard before – it was brand new) was playing, and the words caught my attention. The singer lamented that, last Christmas, he had given his heart to his beloved, and she had given it away the very next day. That was exactly how I felt! This song seemed to be speaking directly to me.
“Free Man in Paris” by Joni Mitchell
Milton also introduced me to the music of Joni Mitchell. And this is my favorite Joni song. It’s so upbeat – whenever I want to give myself some kind of mental boost, I sing it to myself (not out loud, fortunately).
From an early age I knew that I wasn’t free. I had so many cultural and religious constraints placed upon me, that I envied the regular people, who seemed to be able to do whatever they wanted. (Of course, this isn’t necessarily a good thing – there should be a comfortable middle ground between utter depravity and relentless self-denial.) I never felt that I could study whatever I really wanted to and enjoyed (ie liberal arts), and I knew that there were rigid constraints on who I could marry. And I rationalized this, made it acceptable in my mind, by having a disparaging attitude to these liberal, western freedoms. It’s taken me decades to set myself free and accept the joy and responsibility that comes with personal freedom.
Back in college days, I had ended up studying Chemistry, which I didn’t really enjoy, but when it came to my final exams, I knew I had to excel – or face a bleak, under-achieving future. For once in my life, I totally focused on those exams, to the exclusion of all else, and I sung “Free Man in Paris” to myself as I walked to the exam hall.
April 2012
Just the other day, I was having a video-Skype conversation with Milton. I told him that I was about to leave for New York, to start my 50-city US speaking tour for the launch of The Perfect Gentleman.
“When I’m in New York, I’ll be going to Paul Simon’s office, to pay for the permissions to use his lyrics in my book. I might even meet him, if he happens to be there. But I may not have much to say to him – after all, what do we have in common? I’ve just been so deeply in love recently, and now she’s run away and left me heartbroken. How could Paul Simon possibly relate to that?”
We both fell on the floor, rolling with laughter.
Imran Ahmad and The Perfect Gentleman: A Muslim Boy Meets the West links:
the author’s blog
the book’s website
Autumn Blues Review review
Caffeinated Muslim review
Examiner.com review
Macleans.ca review
New York Journal of Books review
Oprah.com review
The Record review
Huffington Post contributions by the author
also at Largehearted Boy:
other Book Notes playlists (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlists
List of Online “Best Books of 2011″ Lists
List of 2011 Year-End Online Music Lists
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
52 Books, 52 Weeks (weekly book reviews)
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (weekly comics highlights)
Daily Downloads (free and legal daily mp3 downloads)
guest book reviews
Largehearted Word (weekly new book highlights)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film’s soundtracks)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from the week’s CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Kevin Brockmeier, George Pelecanos, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, David Peace, Myla Goldberg, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Ben Tanzer’s debut novel Lucky Man, initially published in 2007, is an arresting and darkly comic coming of age story told by four friends.
Stream a Spotify playlist of these tunes. If you don’t have Spotify yet, sign up for the free service.
In his own words, here is Ben Tanzer’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel, Lucky Man:
There is looking back and then there is looking back on looking back. Which is to say that it is somehow the five-year anniversary of the release of my debut novel Lucky Man and I have this new anniversary edition coming out. The release is forcing me to look back, and I have an endless array of feelings associated with doing so, especially because it is Lucky Man, which like so many debut novels, involves looking back itself, to the people we once were, how we changed, what happened along the way, and the music we were listening to as it all went down.
One piece of this has to do with the song “Lucky Man” itself, its vibe, and what I was feeling when I wrote the book and edited it. As a song, it’s not one I necessarily listen to now outside of the random appearances it makes as it shuffles by on my iPod. But it meant something to me then, just as the songs I chose for the book meant something to me at the ages the characters listen to them, even if like “Lucky Man,” I don’t listen to them nearly as much these days.
That’s the thing about looking back though, it’s full of memories, feelings and an assortment of associations we didn’t even realize had faded away.
“Lucky Man” – The Verve
Every office has that person. Or at least I hope they do. The geeked-out, indie-loving mix-tape guru dude or chick. I have been at my office so long now that I have worked with three such iterations of this archetype, all of whom have hooked me up with new music and all of whom who have had a way of making me feel old and out of touch. The dude in the case of “Lucky Man” handed me a mix-tape one afternoon titled British Summer Mix 2005. There were songs from The Smiths which I knew well, and others from a band named Coldplay I had not quite ever listened to before that. Overall, it was good, pleasant, not in the vein of the louder things I was listening to then, X and The Ramones, but fine. One day though while editing the manuscript for what was then untitled, but would soon become Lucky Man, the song “Lucky Man” by The Verve came on and it was all there, the touch of sadness and impossibility I was capture in the text, the rhythm I sought, the lyrics “Happiness, more or less,” and that title, which really spoke to something I was aiming for with the book as well, what’s luck really, and how do we define it? I also remembered that “Lucky Man” was the title of Michael J. Fox’s memoir and I couldn’t help but believe there would be people who might buy my book by accident while thinking they were buying his if I ever got someone to publish it. It seemed possible right? I hoped so. And I still do.
“Cinnamon Girl” – Neil Young, “Add It Up” – Violent Femmes
Neil Young and the Violent Femmes were playing everywhere and at every party I attended when I was in high school, and it was impossible to write a party scene as I did early in the novel and not have these songs make an appearance in the background. What’s funny of course is that “Add It Up” was current and still transcendent then, and “Cinnamon Girl” was anything but current. I suppose though that “Cinnamon Girl” was where we tended to start the night, mellow and plaintive and full of longing and “Add It Up” was where we finished, manic and high and hoping to get laid. Speaking of getting laid, I should add, that what we didn’t listen to then was hair rock, but when I was recently asked to write a piece for an anthology called Hair Lit focused on the music of 80′s hair bands, I chose to write a story based on “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi, a song which would have also been popular then, but one I never recall hearing at any parties anywhere. What struck me as I wrote this piece, however, is that Neil Young sang of politics and heroin, things we did not care about and would maybe never dabble much in, heroin certainly, and yet we listened to him relentlessly regardless, and Bon Jovi spoke to finding girls and getting laid, which is about all we cared about, and maybe still do on most days, but we never could see the point of listening to him at all.
“Graceland” – Paul Simon, “Buffalo Soldier” – “Bob Marley, Don’t Go” – Yaz
Not unlike the characters Louie and Sammy in Lucky Man, I moved out to California after college with a friend, we drove, we took our time, we took a lot of drugs and we listened to Graceland, Legend and Upstairs at Erics repeatedly on the trip. I believe there must be some connective thread between these discs, but I’m not sure what it is. I don’t even know why these were the only discs we seemed to have on hand when we left for the trip. I do know that they never got old. I also know that this was the one stretch in my life where I wasn’t so into music, new music anyway, finding it and devouring it, and obsessively listening to something fresh and exciting. I suppose nothing felt fresh to me then, which is partially why I, and by extension these characters, wanted to move West in the first place, to seek something new and different. On a side note, when I was scheduled do a reading in New York for Lucky Man’s initial release, my then ten year-old nephew asked me if he could attend. I told him I honestly didn’t think there was a single page in the book I could read in front of someone his age, to which he replied, but the quote on the back cover references bon bons, you can’t read about bon bons in front of me? I wasn’t sure which scene he could possibly be referring to, so I took a look at the quote: “We are only one day in at this point, but we have already settled into a steady diet of Pop Tarts, Twizzlers, bong hits, and the USA Today sports page.” At the time I thought to myself, well at least he doesn’t know what bong hits are yet. Now though he is practically the age of the characters in the book when it opens, which leaves me very worried, and doubtful, we could have the same exchange today.
“Estimated Prophet” – Grateful Dead
The goal when talking Dead songs is not to come off like a trippy, Deadhead freaker, full of wannabe miracles, love and life-changing moments. Yet there is no other way to do it, none, not for me anyway. The fact is, I did once wander into Jerry warming-up for the second act of a show during a bad trip as the character Louie does and the experience was transformative. Listening to the Dead also made me want to listen to music again, all kinds, and for me there is a path from the Dead to the Beastie Boys to the Ramones and beyond. And of all that happened when I moved to California and began to embrace the fact that there really was more out there than I thought knew. Still, there was a moment when I wondered if I should cut back on drugs, reconnect with my family, my old friends and move back east, while also struggling with whether I could ever really leave California. My feelings about the rightness of the move had been clinched just months after arriving, while tripping in the back seat of a car as we drove down Highway 1 to Santa Cruz and I listened to “Estimated Prophet” for the first time. All of which led me to decide at the final Dead show I was attending before moving back home, that if the Dead somehow decided to play “Estimated Prophet” that night, I would not allow myself to move under any circumstances. It would be a sign, done, no questions asked. They didn’t play it though, and soon thereafter I was off and running again.
“Rolling in the Deep” – Adele, “Little Lion Man” – Mumford & Sons, “bizness” – tUne-yarDs, “January Wedding” – The Avett Brothers
Looking back on the time period around Lucky Man’s initial release I am struck by the whiplash I was experiencing musically as I found myself caught between my then five year-old son’s desire to be all Disney all the time, including, but not limited to High School Musical 2 and anything Miley Cyrus; his disdain for everything else, especially that which I was listening to; and my desire to get as far away as I could from not just High School Musical, but at times parenting itself, which is when I stumbled into Avail, Be Your Own Pet, The Hold Steady and Ike Reilly, all of whom I held onto and still won’t let go of. That said, my son is no longer all Disney, he now loves Adele, and I can dig that, and he is very much into tUne-yarDs, also wonderful, and there is also Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brothers and Bon Iver which we listen to as we make pancakes on the weekend, and some of this is his influence, and some of it is still that of co-workers and friends who keep making suggestions and burning me discs, and while much of this is new music, it is also more mellow, maybe, and possibly more popular as well, and it makes me wonder if I am slowly drifting into a life more mainstream than ever, propelled by parenting and age, and the inability to come up with the energy needed to explore new things? Of course, as I look back on the writing of Lucky Man, my own move to California, the drugs and the dead, I am also aware of just how little I feel like I need to bust out of some kind of box I don’t want to be in, because for the most part I no longer feel like I’m in one I need to bust out of.
All of which is to say, I am looking back, but I am also looking at now, and I am trying to make sense of something, nostalgia, emotions, decisions made and not made, and what the music means to me, the characters I write about and the stories we tell.
Ben Tanzer and Lucky Man links:
the author’s blog
the author’s podcast
the author’s zine
Chicagoist interview with the author
Largehearted Boy Book Notes essay by the author for 99 Problems
Largehearted Boy Book Notes essay by the author for Most Likely You Go Your Way and I Go Mine
My Book, The Movie essay by the author
also at Largehearted Boy:
other Book Notes playlists (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlists
List of Online “Best Books of 2011″ Lists
List of 2011 Year-End Online Music Lists
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
52 Books, 52 Weeks (weekly book reviews)
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (weekly comics highlights)
Daily Downloads (free and legal daily mp3 downloads)
guest book reviews
Largehearted Word (weekly new book highlights)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film’s soundtracks)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from the week’s CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
Have to give a nod to Dick Clark, one of the hustling low-rent entrepreneurs who turned rock n’ roll into a cultural phenomenon. Clark, for all his slickness, operated in the Barnum carnival barker American tradition of ballyhoo. He defined America, selling good clean innocent not-too-sophisticated fun. The salesman who could put over anything—and sometimes did.
p.s. Let’s get Chubby Checker in the Rock Hall of Fame! That he’s not in is a disgrace.
Last week’s contest, which offered Jonathan Lethem’s new 33 1/3 book on Talking Heads’ Fear of Music album, prompted several friends to ask me about my favorite books in this series on seminal albums. This week, I am giving away two of those favorites, and turning the concept around by asking you which books deserve an album written around them.
To enter this week’s contest, name a book that deserves its own concept album. Bonus points (and a bonus 0 Threadless gift certificate) if you match the book to a specific musical artist you would like to see write and perform the music.
One winner, chosen randomly from the commenters, will receive the following prizes:
Fear of Music, by Carl Wilson
Master of Reality, by John Darnielle
A 0 Threadless gift certificate to buy book-related t-shirts like A Voyage of Discovery, A Book Lover, November Was a Good Month, Brainy Rainbow, or Word!, music-related t-shirts like The Official Guide to Music, Boom Box, Sound of the Dark, or anything else that catches your fancy.
If you have already read these books or they don’t interest you, I am happy to substitute a second 0 Threadless gift certificate for the books.
The winner will be chosen randomly at midnight ET Friday evening (April 27th).
also at Largehearted Boy:
previous and ongoing contests at Largehearted Boy
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
52 Books, 52 Weeks (my yearly reading series)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (highlights of the week’s new comics)
Book Notes (authors create playlists for their book)
Daily Downloads (daily free and legal music downloads)
guest book reviews
Largehearted Word (highlights of the week’s book releases)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily links from the worlds of music, literature, and pop culture)
The literary establishment is in panic, worried, because of affordable ebooks, that their tottery and moldy empire will come crashing down. Yesterday saw a shaky editorial in the New York Times from lit writer Ann Patchett complaining that brick-and-mortar bookstores are in trouble. She’s frantic that the Pulitzer board awarded no Fiction prize this year. Patchett said that the Department of Justice, by coming out against price-rigging, “has decided to be Amazon’s bodyguard.”
In the same issue, in a different piece, New Republic honcho Leon Wieseltier is quoted on a similar theme: “People who know how to publish books are in danger of being put out of business by people who think they do but don’t.” I guess he can’t see the obvious contradiction in his statement (apart from the fact it’s not true). If publishers are going out of business, then they don’t really know how to publish books—at least not in the current environment.
For some writers, like myself, the ebook revolution spearheaded by Amazon and Barnes and Noble is a godsend. Our current great literary system has designated me blacklisted, a pariah, untouchable, however you wish to term it. No one in the entire system from writers to editors to agents to journalists will allow themselves any contact with me. Whistle blowers like myself are banished to the far reaches of the literary universe. In exile. But now, even if few people know about them or buy them, I’m at least able to get some of my writing via ebooks out there, available for public view. It allows me to prove that I can in fact write. I’ll go further and say that my newest fusion novel, The Tower, is competitive with anything the conglomerates produce. It’s also that rare animal, pop and literature both.
Apparatchiks like Ann Patchett and Leon Wieseltier believe the current moldy system is wonderful, because for those inside the system it is. Neither of them cares two cents worth about corruption within their realm, or what happens to writers who don’t conform. They’ve been trying to shove their stale conception of literary art, centered around the so-called perfect sentence and nothing else—bureaucratic lit—down the public’s throat, through writers like David Foster Wallace, for decades, but the public refuses to swallow it.
It’s truly funny that the great success the big publishers are having at the moment has nothing to do with “literary” fiction. Instead, fed-up readers desperate for readability and plot—and no longer offered that by mainstream novelists—have found it in the obscure or scorned categories of fantasy, romance, and Young Adult. The publishers’ success has come through publishing’s back door, and has been despite the guidance of mandarins. The total dominance of hack authors like George R. Martin highlights the utter bankruptcy of literary fiction. No Pulitzer award? Never has the granting of no award been more fitting.
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Kevin Brockmeier, George Pelecanos, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, David Peace, Myla Goldberg, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Rob Jovanovic’s new book Seeing the Light: Inside the Velvet Underground is the most thorough history of the band I have read, a definitive exploration of both their music and iconic members.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“In this moving tribute and first-rate history, rock journalist Jovanovic gives us an absorbing chronicle of the Velvet Underground’s rise to fame, its bitter arguments, and its unparalleled musical genius.”
Stream a Spotify playlist of these tunes. If you don’t have Spotify yet, sign up for the free service.
In his own words, here is Rob Jovanovic’s Book Notes music playlist for his book, Seeing the Light: Inside the Velvet Underground:
Many writers listen to music while working, and when I’m writing about a band I listen to little else for weeks at a time. Sometimes it takes me years before I can go back and listen to that band just for pure enjoyment, and in a couple of cases it’s ruined my ability to enjoy that band ever again. Luckily that wasn’t the case with the Velvet Underground. Here are some songs.
1. R.E.M. – “There She Goes Again”
When I heard my first Velvet Underground song I didn’t even know it belonged to them. I was getting into R.E.M. in the mid-1980s and they’d often cover Velvet’s songs like ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ and ‘Femme Fatale’. When they included these and ‘There She Goes Again’ on their 1987 compilation of odds and ends, Dead Letter Office, I decided I had to seek out the original recordings and have never looked back.
2. Velvet Underground – “I’m Waiting for the Man”
Like any long project, writing a book has ups and downs. Sometimes the words would flow easily, some days it was a real struggle. While working on Seeing the Light, I’d sometimes use this abrasive, unrelenting track to shake me out of any lulls and get me back to my keyboard. It always works, I just put it on to help me finish this list. You should try it.
3. Velvet Underground – “Venus in Furs”
In 1993, around the time that the Velvet Underground briefly reunited, a Dunlop tyres TV advertisement was aired using the slogan “Tested for the unexpected” with this track as its soundtrack. The choice of track was unexpected to say the least. It carried some of the band’s most blatant sexual imagery and was now on mainstream TV, showing just how far the boundaries had shifted in popular culture since the Velvet’s time.
4. Velvet Underground – “Who Loves the Sun”
Some people forget, or choose to forget, that the ‘classic’ VU line-up of Reed / Cale / Morrison / Tucker lasted for only two of the band’s four core albums. While it’s true that the experimental nature of the band changed when Doug Yule replaced John Cale, he certainly added pop craft and in this case the vocals for the opening track on Loaded. Today at least, that’s my favourite VU album, and Yule’s contribution is forever underestimated.
5. Velvet Underground – “I’m Sticking with You”
Everything I’d read was true. Moe Tucker was one of the nicest people in music. When I talked to her for the book I was surprised to hear that she’d almost been too shy to sing this track and had insisted that everyone else leave the studio when she finally agreed to do so. In her comeback years she toured Europe as the leader of her own band. Quite a transformation and quite a lady.
6. anything by The Bizarros
When Sterling Morrison walked out on the band, he managed to perform one of rock and roll’s great disappearing acts. For years no one outside his close circle of friends seemed to know where he was. It later emerged that he was studying and teaching in Texas and had been playing in blues bands at the weekend. His widow, Martha, sent me a couple of CDs of his post-Velvets music and any track from his band The Bizarros would have to get a place in this list.
7. The Replacements – “Alex Chilton”
Not a Velvets song, or cover, in fact it doesn’t really have anything to do with the Velvets. Except this: Alex Chilton could be a wily and difficult person to deal with, he did things his way and sometimes without an obvious reason. Then Paul Westerberg came along and wrote this song, which kind of made Chilton seem more human, in a distorted way. Someone should do the same for Lou Reed. No, really.
8. Beck- “Sunday Morning”
In 2009, Beck gathered a selection of musicians together and covered the entirety of the Velvet’s debut album live in the studio. This version was a beautifully bare and eclectic take on the original recording. Beck’s grandfather and mother had both spent time at Andy Warhol’s factory in the 1960s and this cover brought the family connection full circle.
Rob Jovanovic and Seeing the Light: Inside the Velvet Underground links:
A.V. Club review
Boston Globe review
Houston Chronicle review
Publishers Weekly review
Wall Street Journal review
also at Largehearted Boy:
other Book Notes playlists (authors create music playlists for their book)
my 11 favorite Book Notes playlists
List of Online “Best Books of 2011″ Lists
List of 2011 Year-End Online Music Lists
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
52 Books, 52 Weeks (weekly book reviews)
Antiheroines (interviews with up and coming female comics artists)
Atomic Books Comics Preview (weekly comics highlights)
Daily Downloads (free and legal daily mp3 downloads)
guest book reviews
Largehearted Word (weekly new book highlights)
musician/author interviews
Note Books (musicians discuss literature)
Shorties (daily music, literature, and pop culture links)
Soundtracked (composers and directors discuss their film’s soundtracks)
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from the week’s CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
Try It Before You Buy It features free and legal mp3 downloads and full album streams from the week’s music releases:
AU: Both Lights
full album stream
Bear in Heaven: I Love You It’s Cool
Bear in Heaven: “Reflection of You” [mp3]
Black Mountain: Year Zero: The Original Soundtrack
Black Mountain: “Mary Lou” [mp3] from Year Zero soundtrack (out April 3rd)
Breton: Other People’s Problems
full album stream
Caltrop: ten million years and eight minutes
Caltrop: “Blessed” [mp3]
Candlebox: Low Stories and Other Musings
full album stream
CeU: Caravana Sereia
full album stream
Chase and Status: No More Idols
full album stream
De La Soul’s Plug 1 and Plug 2: First Serve
full album stream
fIREHOSE: lowFLOWs: The Columbia Anthology (’91 – ’93)
full album stream
Great Lake Swimmers: New Wild Everywhere
full album stream
Hollis Brown: Nothing and the Famous No One
full album stream
Hollis Brown: “Ride on the Train” [mp3]
Ian Anderson: Thick as a Brick 2
full album stream
Jill Barber: Mischievous Moon
full album stream
Joshua McCormack: The Phanton King
full album stream
Joshua McCormack: “Terminal Velocity” [mp3]
Kasper Bjorke: Fool
full album stream
Les Momies de Palerme: Brulez Ce Coeur
Les Momies de Palerme: “Medee” [mp3]
The Lumineers: The Lumineers
full album stream
Lux: We Are Not the Same
full album stream
Lux: “Coroner’s Office” [mp3]
Lux: “The Window” [mp3]
Magic Bullets: Much Ado About
full album stream
Midnight Magic: What the Eyes Can’t See
full album stream
Midtown Dickens: Home
Midtown Dickens: “Only Brother” [mp3]
Midtown Dickens: “Walk, Don’t Run” [mp3]
Paul Van Dyk: Evolution
full album stream
Quantic and Alice Russell: Look Around the Corner
full album stream
Ravens and Chimes: Holiday Life
full album stream
Ravens and Chimes: “Arrow” [mp3]
Simon Felice: Simon FeliceSimon FeliceSimon Felice: “New York Times” [mp3]
Whitejacket: Hollows and Rounds
Whitejacket: “Medinah” [mp3]
Whitejacket: “The Modern” [mp3]
Wilson Phillips: Dedicated
full album stream
Yppah: Eighty One
full album stream
also at Largehearted Boy:
other Try It Before You Buy It lists
100 Online Sources for Free and Legal Music Downloads
2011 Year-End Online Music Lists
daily free and legal mp3 downloads
this week’s complete list of interesting music releases
“Westward the Women” continued.
The fascinating thing about movies is that the actors bring themselves, their conscious and unconscious selves, to their roles. They can hide under makeup, but subliminally they can’t hide themselves. They’re humans naked in front of the camera. Their personality comes through—which is of course what gives us stars. The actors themselves are a subtext to any movie.
What do Robert Taylor as Buck, and Denise Darcel as Fifi, bring to their parts? Here is where it gets interesting, why this is perfect casting.
Robert Taylor was born Spangler Arlington Brugh. As a young man his goal was to be a concert musician. He later admitted he was a studious introvert. He fell into acting because of his pretty boy looks. His first big role was opposite Greta Garbo in “Camille.” Afterward his studio, MGM, put him on a physical fitness regimen and sent him out hunting to toughen him up, so he’d be suitable as a leading man in other roles. Taylor eagerly adopted the program. By 1951, when “Westward the Women” was made, he’d been playing tough guy roles for ten years. He’s believable in the role—but with him, rather than an oversized John Wayne, it’s to some extent still a role, part bluff, part will, and part intelligence—and it’s only through bluff, will, and intelligence that the character of “Buck” will be able to control his men—and the women—and get the train to California. This makes the situation more of a challenge. Subliminally the audience picks up on that. It also helps explain the character’s extreme “macho” attitude.
What of his opponent/partner in the matter, Denise Darcel? From what we know of her, the young Denise Darcel was the opposite of Robert Taylor. Apparently she was known for accompanying an American pilot in a small observation plane, at the end of the Second World War, buzzing the happy crowds of Paris. Like her character, she worked as a dance hall girl. She was apparently fearless and an extrovert. She brings that to the part, as well as her obvious natural attributes.
We already know that Robert Taylor was as self-created as Jay Gatsby. The character of Buck, as we’ve said, has to be that. The character of Fifi Danon is a self-creation also. We first see her as a flashy prostitute, ultra-feminine, a caricature of femininity. Fifi and her partner-in-crime Laurie realize the only way they’ll get onto the wagon train is by appearing “normal.” While other hookers are chased out, Fifi and Laurie leave to disguise themselves—or, in effect they drop their disguises. Laurie is able to pass as a normal woman in demure dress and bonnet. Fifi by contrast looks ridiculous in the get-up. Her outsized figure and her outsized personality, and her grotesque accent make her ridiculous, and she knows it. She’s a freak, an outsider. It’s probably what she’s been running from.
A movie screen, by the way, emphasizes Denise Darcel’s build. She comes across as a force of nature, a physical presence, even among a collection of the strongest women MGM could no doubt find, rivaled only by towering Patience, who’s kind of an Ajax with a sense of humor to Fifi Danon’s dynamic Achilles. Since we’re dealing with an epic, filled with heroes, the analogy is apt. Which I guess puts Buck in the role of Agamemnon, with Ito as his advisor Odysseus. (Or if you prefer, Ulysses.)
The patriarch, Roy Whitman, sees right through Fifi and Laurie. He presses Fifi as to why she wants to go to California. She finally admits, in an utterly sad voice, “To change.” Her facade has dropped. She stands exposed before us. What does she mean? What does she want? Likely she doesn’t know herself, only that she’s desperately unhappy in her current role, and hopes that in California she can find a role not available in Chicago. Whitman has been around enough to see this—as Buck surely doesn’t—so he allows them to sign on.
This is the subtext for the dynamic between the two lead characters. Stay tuned, if you’re still reading.
