Whit's Blog / 1000 Recordings

Miscellaney, October 17 2007

• The Real Raymond Carver: Expansive or Minimal?
  (tags: raymondcarver altman shortstories)
• Still Punk, Still Proud, Still Breaking the Rules
  I asked a guy once whose music taste I respected if it was OK to like Blondie. ("Heart of Glass" was the object of my affection.) He said, yeah, it was. He also liked Lynyrd Skynyrd. This is how I learned music is not a tribal affiliation.
  (tags: blondie debbieharry)
• Surface Navigation Help for Subway Riders
  OH PRAISE GOD. GLORY TO HIM IN THE HIGHEST. CAN I GET A WITNESS?
  (tags: subway manhattan newyork newyorkcity)
• Dave Moore - Pandora Internet Radio
  More than a little Mark Knopfler inspiration, but well beyond mimicry and into its own sound.
  (tags: davemoore guitar markknopfler direstraits)
• Lords Of Acid - Pandora Internet Radio
  Straight up, man, there's some nasty music out there I NEVER EVEN HEARD BEFORE. WHERE HAVE I BEEN? (Someday, Joe will read this blog. On that day, I will take away the Internet and not let him have it back EVER.)
  (tags: farstucker groove independent techno)

At minimum

We all remember reading Raymond Carver, I suspect, if we have. I remember getting a (legally,  no doubt) photocopied edition in a class freshman year at Duke with Brett Cox. I read "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" a few times, and then I bought a water-stained paperback. I didn't really read the works with what you would call pleasure, but more like fascination, the bird bewitched by the snake.

I like the Altman movies based on the books, too. I care very much for Carver, and when he sickened with cancer I was moved and sorry that he was gone.

The last few years have shown us that he was almost certainly Maxwell Perkinsed.  Just as Perkins did for Thomas Wolfe, Gordon Lish appears to have radically altered Carver's original vision -- in the process, creating what was and is clearly great art, among the best short story work of the century, as valuable and moving as John Cheever or John O'Hara.

But if an author begs that work not be published, something is wrong. The partnership appears to have been tragically toxic, although history will focus on its negative and not its positive aspects. No matter what, it seems clear now that it was a partnership -- not sole authorship -- that resulted in Carver's great work. Works like "Beginnings" must be published, not as revisionism but as examination of the infinite complexity of human endeavor and its power to create lasting artistic value.

Outsiders on the Inside

• ‘The Outsiders’: 40 Years Later - Books - Review - New York Times
  Never liked the book except in the abstract, but it's an interesting review.
  (tags: hinton SEHinton theoutsiders books)
• Philip Glass - Appomattox - Satyagraha - Opera - New York Times
  Oh, God, no. Nurse! Mister Glass wrote another opera! Adjust the medication!
  (tags: glass opera appomattox)

Enchanting

Joseph “wrote” a book this week. It has several stories in it. He has titled one “The Golden Flesh-Eating Spider That Used To Be a Pretty Fairy Princess.” We are not reserving a table at the Caldecott medal ceremony just yet. (The narrative advises that the princess was transformed by a witch who "ruined her life for no good reason.")

Miscellany (Soundtrack included)

• DURKL t shirts: get with us. ill, suave, cool 80s t-shirts.
  Something is happening in terms of methods of marketing here, and I don't have a word for it, but YUCK. YUCK WITH RAISINS.
• The 3hive 2005 Year-End List
  Nice wrapup of downloadable music. No M.I.A. or LCD Soundsystem here, but good solid studio work that in many cases shines.
  (tags: 3hive music)
• 3hive: Ladytron
  Take me back. TAKE ME BACK. (Read out loud; repeat until all possible meanings are exhausted.)
  (tags: ladytron music newwave)
• Kornwolf by Tristan Egolf, reviewed by Esquire
  If only I had all the time to read in the world.
  (tags: kornwolf)

Tags, Books, Music, Pictures

• adaptive path » an interview with flickr's eric costello
  Plan B works out.
  (tags: ajax flickr ericcostello photography)
• Review of John Battelle's Search Book - New York Times
  I gotta read this. Must make free time. Stop reading blogs. NO MORE BLOGS. Or email. MUST READ ACTUAL STUFF.
  (tags: google search)
• NPR : Link Wray: Father of the Power Chord
  You learn something new you already forgot once every day.
• NPR : Violinist, Singer-Songwriter Andrew Bird
  The Loudoun Wainwright force is strong in this one. But he's no copycat -- it's much more spare. It might be fairer to say that Neil Young runs deeper still across this whole genre, and under him Pete Seeger. Under him? Someone somewhere on a bare wood porch there's a guy with a washboard and laundray bucket.
  (tags: "Andrew Bird" violin andrewbird)
• NPR : Loving the Imperfections of Toy Cameras
  OK, admitting I only kind of get this. See the next link for the blog of an old acquaintance who is also quite accomplished in this work. So much luck in any art, I know -- but this seems extreme.
  (tags: toycamera lightleak)
• Gord Is Dead
  My old schoolmate, now a skilled toy camera photographer.
  (tags: toycamera lightleak GordonStettinius)

Write a Letter

Friend of mine reads my Aristocrats post, and it makes him think. He remembers his first date, which was at that movie. And he goes into detail. It was quite a date. (Maybe the posting will cause him to allow me to blog it, names removed.)

Oh yeah, he says, I guess it was a different movie. The Aristocats, not -crats.

I told him it was funny; he said he'd been told he should write a book. (Me too. I got funny too. Funny is my people. Too.) And I said, whuffor? Books won't make you rich. Books make, what, Tom Clancy rich? And maybe if it's made into a movie? Or, like, Alan Dean Foster. He could be rich. (I will so bet Alan Dean Foster is way rich.)

So I said, what's the point? Write a blog. You'll get paid in page views. People will Google your date. (Also your recipes. I get big snaps for my Chocolate Crinkles. Yahoo them, you poor weak baker freak. AGAIN. You lost the recipe. FIND ME.) They'll google that time your brother got to the door first and locked it. (Or did you get to the door first and lock it? I have CRS syndrome.) That's bigger than weak dollars. Never will you be remaindered. Your moment will not pass. Some day a bunch of kids will cite you in their middle school papers. ("What The Bicentennial Meant To Children," by Liam Petznick.)  People read you. Some act like fans. (Why not? I'm his fan.) Unless you are selling a blockbuster or a timeless masterpiece, IT'S TIME TO FORGET THE SIGNATURE-BASED PRINTING SYSTEM. ("Quarto" means "folded over into quarters.")

Let's face it, books are dead. Or at least mashed up. Mr. Potter, the recycling department is paging you.

[Note to self: Delete entry immediately after finishing manuscript-in-progress. DO NOT SHOW TO HOUGHTON-MIFFLIN.]

John Fowles, (died 2005)

His work stuck with me more than I ever expected, I think. I wrote one of the best papers I ever wrote on The French Lieutenant's Woman, and then raged through The Magus (the director's cut of the book, I think, with extra chapters or something?) and bought The Collector but never read more than a few pages. Pieces of The French Lieutenant's Woman still pop up from time to time, but The Magus burns particularly bright. I was lucky when I was young, maybe like its protagonist too self-satisfied and certain, and the idea of being cut down to size (which life does anyway) by a dispassionate audience was ravishing. What good work he did.

Bittersweet

The library has books for sale in the vestibule, 25 cents each, mostly ex library. I stopped just for a moment to see what was new on the rack. Three were by Ezra Jack Keats. Wow! Three books by Ezra Jack Keats for just 75 cents! And then I thought about how that means, of course, that not enough people are checking those books out. And that kids won't see those books in the collection any more. On the other hand, new kids' books authors deserve room on the shelves, too. I mean, I love Peanuts VERY much, but do we really need repeats on precious newsprint? (Obviously, repeats on the Web are a pure good thing.)

I decided to quit overthinking the dang issue and found a fourth book, newer, to round out an even buck. And so Joe has three new Ezra Jack Keats books, which he might like or he might not, but they're good books, and life goes on.