I'll do anything for love

Fury is but a short distance from the rain-besotted strip malls on Siegen Ln.

The Reivers, Pop Beloved
Josh Russell, My Bright Midnight
Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
The Go-Betweens, 16 Lovers Lane
Orange Juice, The Glascow School

I can only guess it was the influence of having read this not long before falling asleep in front of the TV, but I had a dream last night in which Diablo Cody appeared standing naked in a doorway, not in a salacious way at all but in an incidental, Renaissance painting, "Oh, me? I hang around naked in doorways" way. I don't know if it was really her - I don't exactly have a clear picture of what she looks like clothed or otherwise, and there were no tattoos, which she has a lot of, right? But in the dream  I knew it was her, like I think I said, "Oh look - Diablo Cody" or something like that. I think it might have also been Peregrine from Work of Art, but it wasn't really her either. Either way, disappointingly tame for a naked-moderately-famous-person dream.

I finished My Bright Midnight last night. I am too close to the author I think to do a publishable review - we were friends in college and this novel was published by the same press doing my book - so I'll say what I'll say here: It was really good. The short novel traces a rather sprawling tale of a reluctant German immigrant in New Orleans at the tail end of WWII. It does an excellent job of not being too New Orleans-y while still being totally there; in fact its geographic arc from the city to the coast and back drew a light-pressured sketch of the landscape similar to that found in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer. The protagonists in both have distanced tethers to the world in which they live, but instead of wandering in the wonder, our man in Midnight finds himself wanting to swim but bobbing in the eddies of inaction, of deflection, only to discover his stroke when the water gets rough. Past and future grow blurrier as the story proceeds, until they finally don't really matter at all when he accepts the present and only then does the foreigner become resident, the transplant take root, the backstory give way to a life.

Midnight was a nice break from dark-hearted Jewish apocalypse tales, but I am back on that horse again with Shteyngart. There was an excerpt of Super Sad in that contentious New Yorker 20 under 40 issue that bowled me over, so I can't wait to sink into the whole thing. I got into a discussion about jangle pop as the real sound of the suburbs as opposed to the idealized version as projected in the new Arcade Fire record. The Reivers were put forth as the shining example of suburb rock, though Fountains of Wayne seem to fit that mantle as well. I said suburb rock is "about dreaming about possibilities rather than grasping them."

I love the Go-Betweens without ever really wrapping my heart around them. You should read the interview with founder Robert Forster in the recent issue of the Believer. My daughter is pacing behind me humming something that sounds exactly like the synth line in "Wishing" by A Flock of Seagulls. She's looking over my shoulder as I type this and asked that I use the "largest" instead of the "small" font for the caption. I'll do anything for love. I should probably get to work.


A Flock of Seagulls, "Wishing"

torn and Tatlin!

Tatlin! Doing my part for the Guy Davenport revival.

Arcade Fire, The Suburbs and Neon Bible
Matthew Dear, Black City

Media Announcement: My review of the new Arcade Fire is up at outsideleft.com. "It's like the naughtiness of the key party reduced to keyless entry."


I wrote the following diatribe yesterday and wasn't going to post it, but the reality of the fading of net neutrality in regards to the Google-Verizon deal hit my "money ruins everything" button in a similar way, so here it is.

I am a little torn about the news of Barnes & Noble financial troubles. There are many reasons to hate Barnes & Noble. They run out the sweet little bookshops from which you calmly browsed but never bought anything in favor of a gigantic one in which you never buy anything either, only to apparently no make so much money at it. And imagine how much they will suck when someone buys out Barnes & Noble and adds their touch. That paneling will slowly be phased out. The top mural of author caricatures will give way a massive canvas for slogans. And then that company will go under and we'll have a giant empty store next to the run down movie theatre, and then the rats will come.  And we still won't have any bookstores in which to browse and hardly ever buy anything because eBooks (or e-books or whatever; book pills) kinda make a lot of sense for consumers once they get the  technology figured out and the paper and ink fetishists will be sent to the library where the books and CD's and magazines that one didn't buy at Barnes & Noble are free anyway.

I also happen to like Barnes & Noble, at least the one here, despite having been a first-hand witness to the cult-like mind control it exerts on its employees. I like seeing that last single copy of my book in the music section, even though there were once two others from which I have not seen a nickel. And I like little dusty bookshops too, except for the fact that they never have anything you want and but we can order it but but I can order it too, more easily and with a discount, and while an Amazon box is always a welcome visitor to one's doorstep, it doesn't compare to that one time in ten that you do find what you want at a  dusty little bookshop or, better yet, something you long forgot about wanting and they have it used.

So, yeah. Torn. I went gleefully post-object with my voracious music habits and for the most part am happy with the decision, but I also see its points of failure: relying on systems that have less than reliable business models, the potential narrowing of availability.  I am a life long library nerd and think every book on earth is available to me for free because it is - for now. Again, until the rats come.

Tatlin was a Constructivist. I used to keep a copy of a book of Constructivist manifestos I got at dear old departed Caliban's on top of the toilet tank because those fervent little diatribes about how we should do things are inspiring. I've similarly kept copies of Leaves of Grass and Finnegans Wake there for the same reason.  More than one person has told me (OK; two) that they keep my book in their bathroom and that, to me, is a place of honor. A friend whose book I'm currently rather enjoying suggested on his Facebook that we (like all of us) start a Guy Davenport revival and, on my part, I offered to read Tatlin! once I finish his and then a dystopian black comedy about a future where books are passe  and maybe the old Contructivist will show me the art-in-service-of the-greater good way of how to erect my scattered consumerist thoughts into a gleaming tower of wisdom. At least I checked the book out.

"I love Neil Diamond."

Anubis, the jackal-headed mummy god,  appeared while playing Jenga the other night.

Richard Cartwrangleur, House of the Spirit Wrestler
Dax Riggs, various songs from Say Goodnight to the World
Calexico, Live in Nuremberg

Scott at pgwp, Clarke, and Calexico fans respectively have rarely steered me wrong, so I pass their suggestions on to you, dear reader.


Dax Riggs, "Heartbreak Hotel" at Geronimo Fest in Lafayette,LA on 3-6-2010.


Here he is in our shared hometown of Houma, LA tearing up Nick Drake's "Been Smoking Too Long."

I really dig Dax Riggs.  I think he gets it right. I interviewed him early on in my tenure with 225 and mentioned his voice reminded me of sitting in our apartment in Houma (we lived in the ones behind K-Mart; he and his mom in the ones by the mall, roughly at the same time) playing my mom's Neil Diamond records while ostensibly watching my sister and he kinda sounds like that. He looked back wide-eyed and said with conviction "I love Neil Diamond."

a sailor's warning

There is a sailor's warning about this, as well as a Fixx song.

Media Announcement: in this week's installment of my 225 blog, I declare there are cool things on the Internet. I know! I should have told you before now but I was busy.  

Examples of cool things cited in the aforementioned post: apocalypse rock and public library databases.

Other interesting things on the Internet:  @ayeletw and Art From Behind.This story in The Awl about  Connie Converse stopped me in my tracks as well.


Connie Converse, "One By One"

Why I'm doing this: I just got word that a longshot article I submitted got accepted and I have to augment it with some pithy colon-ized front matter, so I'm getting in the practice.

Important thing to note, succinctly put by Stephen Elliott in his daily, overly personal Rumpus email: "The problem is the mosque isn't at ground zero, it's two blocks away. That's a pretty significant difference. The other problem is that it isn't a mosque."

the quality of these baked goods

Look who lives in a leaf hanging near our driveway!

Josh Russell, My Bright Midnight
Dickie Landry, Fifteen Saxophones
Anthony Braxton, William Parker and Milford Graves
Albert Ayler, Music is the Healing Force of the Universe
Gunter Hampel Group, Music from Europe

1. I had a dream last night with a free jazz soundtrack, like rackety, let's-throw-music-down-the-stairs fire ritual music. Totally vivid, but...
2. ...none of it was a vivid as that caterpillar hiding in a leaf near our driveway.
3. Josh Russell and I were friends in college and are now in Facebook and his book has the same publisher as mine will and despite all that, his new novel is really good. It has an Angela's Ashes gravitational pull to it, a sweet story (so far) touched with enough soot to give it just a little bitterness.
4. I am really into the Piggly Wiggly that opened down the street, though I feel like I'm stepping out on Calandro's a little. I particularly like the chef guy posted throughout the store (captioned below).
5. I had to look up the rule about periods and parentheses to finally get it straight (You put a period inside the parentheses only if they contain a full sentence.)

"I am very dissatisfied with the quality of these baked goods!"


We have fun wherever we go.


"Oh, here I am!"

give Gaddis a go

Piling. Doesn't one moor oneself to a piling?

Joshua Cohen, Witz
Josh Russell, My Bright Midnight
William Gaddis, Agapē Agape
The Arcade Fire, The Suburbs (also from NPR)


This little thing in the Observer about experimental writers got my blood flowing, and made me decide to give Gaddis a go. Like one of the small ones; after Witz (review forthcoming) I am taking a break from taking on monsters like Gaddis's JR or The Recognitions. I have a copy of The Corrections sitting unread on our new artfully book-piled living room tables (thanks John Michael and Chris! Good luck in Massachusetts!) and most of Ulysses on my phone should I need to get adrift in the vastness any time soon.

Anyway, I dug the bit of Gaddis I choked down with my lunch, esp this:

"If Beethoven could be heard by us today, playing his sonatas" lucky he was deaf he'd, blood on the, look at that, arm right down to my hand veins look ready to burst no more tiny felt-tipped wooden fingers no, see what breaks your heart?

What breaks your heart? That is a great editorial question.

Much of the part of  Agapē Agape I read is ate up over computers and their history combined with the loom, and how those working those looms in dim factories were "continually struck in the stomach by the shaft of the roller on which the cloth is being wound" - that quote extracted from a  letter Flaubert penned to the loom manufacturer Jacquard - and that hits Gaddis in the stomach a century or so later. Fair enough, computers are kind of the devil that greases the wheels on which grace travels, BUT as I tried to check this book out, I got a notice on the little kiosk that I was barred, after just having paid a lingering fine to the university at the bursar's office. The desk clerk informed me that without a written receipt I could not get unbarred, to which I informed her the bursar asked that I remedy this fine via computer to avoid printing a  paper receipt. I considered walking away and trying to check out a book of Kafka stories instead to see what bureaucratic mayhem that would generate just as my phone buzzed and in the email was my receipt. I handed my phone to the clerk who then handed it to the man behind the cubicle wall with the button that unbarrs and boom, I was free!

Great story, I know, but the point of it and maybe also of experimental literature is that the system works sometimes by not working enough that it forms a double negative, and works.

Josh (Russell)'s book is nowhere as complicated as all this, at least not at first, but already gave up a great little line in the first paragraph:

We were matching orphans in patched pants.

I picked up a César Aira book as this article and its recomender recommended I do but haven't cracked it open. The system is fragile enough today.

skee-balls could be re-purposed

Awaiting the ultimate showdown.

Iron & Wine and Calexico, In the Reigns
Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill
Thou, Summit (streaming at NPR)

At that crucial moment during the birthday party, I always want the robotic Chuck E. Cheese to attack the costumed one per the primary directive; Frankenstein walking off his little platform intoning THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE over and over. Death match over by the ticket-counter thing. Whack-a-mole mallets and skee-balls could be re-purposed.

At some point this morning I have to type up an interview I did last week with Thou, Baton Rouge's finest apocalypse rock outfit, and lo, their new album Summit is streaming on the NPR website. Tight. How is it that public radio is kinda better at the Internet than the Internet is? Maybe because they have some actual investment in telling people things they would find interesting? There is a lesson in that, somewhere. Happy Monday!


The mariachi singer in "He Lays in the Reigns" kills me every time.