I read these books in tandem. Each is about 250 pages, and each describes a particular aspect of its author’s experience.
I was pretty certain I would like In Ruins. It name checked books and places and things that I already knew and liked—the peculiar buildings and history of the tidelands of east England, as described in W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, the ruins of Rome through the centuries, the fate of the monasteries and abbeys of England after Henry VIII seized them for the crown, Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln Inn Fields, London (which I had visited last year), and the life and work of Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa and author of The Leopard. Plus, it had lots of pictures! The author even manages to work in former world middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler, who, after losing a title bout, came to Rome and put his life in perspective: “I was angry as hell when they took away my title. But when you stand in the Pincio Gardens at sunset looking down at the whole of Rome, across centuries, it sorta puts things in perspective.” Hagler still lives in Italy, where he appears in television and films.
The book is about (spoiler alert!) ruins—how people have seen them through the centuries, what ruins tell us about ourselves and the past, etc. About half the ruins the author discusses are in Italy, and half are in England. You would think that once a building was ruined, that would be more or less the end of the story. But modern, excavated, groomed and managed ruins of the kind available to 21st century tourists are much less interesting than the haphazard, untended, overgrown ruins of the 18th century. In 18th century Rome, the colliseum had small forests growing in its grandstands, and Christian shrines—and even a small building, a hermitage—on its floor. In those days you could ride a horse into the colliseum under the moonlight. A 19th century botanist collected seeds from plants growing in the colliseum and determined that many of them were exotics from Africa and the Middle East. His only guess as to how those plants could have gotten there is that they grew from seeds that had been excreted by lions and other exotic fauna brought to the colliseum in its heyday to munch on Christians and other dainties.
Crazy U is a brisk and perfunctory piece of extended journalism by one Andrew Ferguson, “a senior editor at the Weekly Standard.” Ferguson has a 17-year-old son who was getting ready to apply to college. Since I have a 15-year-old son who might be getting ready to apply to college in about two years, I thought the book might provide some useful insights. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but after about 50 pages I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be getting it. I can’t say that I didn’t pick up a few useful tidbits—for example, I told my son he should start thinking about which teachers might be good for a reference now rather than two years from now when his freshman teachers will be just a dim memory—but my overall impression was that this was a stale piece of hackwork.
I think years of reading New Yorker articles has spoiled me for mainstream journalism. Ferguson does a very professional job of interweaving his son’s story with sections on things like the SAT and the U.S. News college rankings. These expository sections are a bit dry, so the author spices them up a bit with witty asides: “That something so dull [as the SAT] could have an effect so pyrotechnical is hard to credit. It’s as if the Trojan War had been fought over Bette Midler.” This is humor intended to provide respite for the reader who might be beginning to fidget after all the “heavy” information. Jay Leno humor.
Ferguson pretends to be appalled at how excruciatingly careful the people who create the SAT have to be to avoid the faintest hint of political incorrectness, but his book is similarly scrubbed of anything that might align it with one faction or another in the culture wars.
The author’s son is a good student but not exceptional. It could hardly be otherwise, though, since if he were too bright his experience would not generalize well, and if he were not bright enough, it would be cruel to expose him.
Overall, Crazy U felt less like a book and more like a seminar presentation minus the PowerPoint. Written with the discipline of the professional who wants to get the maximum financial return on his time and effort. No wasted speculation, no risky digressions, no stepping off the path for even a second. Crazy like a fox.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
#5: The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
This is one of the most popular books of all time, as big in its day (1836) as Harry Potter is in ours.
But who would want to read it today? A massive Victorian novel without sex, violence, or vampires. Even among Dickens novels, I don’t think it would be in many “top five” lists. I wasn’t really hankering to read it myself, but I had an old Penguin paperback that I had picked up. I liked the cover illustration, I liked the heft of it, and so I started reading, sort of on a self-dare.
I work harder than most people at deciding what books I should read, what movies I should see, and what music I should listen to. For that very reason, I think it’s good idea every so often to “take a flyer.” Taste can be confining, a groove we wear in what the world has to offer. I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to have too much faith in your own taste. Have you heard of “desert island discs”?—this is a genre of music writing where people are asked what five records they would want to have with them if they were stranded on a desert island. (Or rather, they answer without actually being asked.) I realize the real question behind this conceit is merely “What are your favorite records?”, but I can’t help trying to imagine what it would be like if you really were forced to spend the rest of your life under a cocoanut tree with a record player and five records. Maybe one of those wind-up grammaphones with a speaker like a big lily. I suspect that after a few weeks it would not matter what the discs were—or rather, it would matter in ways that we could not imagine in advance. Maybe we’d just want happy music, or singable music, or music that told a story. Would we want Sgt. Peppers or Dark Side of the Moon? I might be just as happy with Celine Dion, Tom Jones, and The Beegees as I would be with the Beatles, Bach, and Charlie Parker. Because taste is an extravagance, a way of coping with surplus. Music is music.
So am I comparing The Pickwick Papers with Celine Dion? Not exactly—but both have sustained and entertained a lot of people. Given the choice, though, I’ll take Pickwick. (Unless I’m in Vegas and I get a good deal on tickets.)
I was somewhat indifferently entertained while reading Pickwick. I didn’t work at it, as I would have if I’d owed somebody a term paper afterwards. There were some good bits of comedy and lots of great period detail about coaches and inns and servants. After finishing the book I went back and read the introduction, and began to understand how to “value” Pickwick. I felt a little guilty for not having recognized all the virtues of the book, all the things that make it remarkable. Pickwick was just a country I was passing through—I dipped a little into what it had to offer, as I would try a few Portuguese dishes if I were staying in Lisbon. Or maybe Dickens is the country, and Pickwick is a small coastal port. In any case, I’m not going to try to be your guide to the Pickwick experience, or to suggest for a moment that this is a trip you should put at the top of your list. Which puts me in mind of those “1000 X’s to See/Do/Hear Before You Die” books—another consumer trope that I am rather inclined to look at too literally. Whenever I see one of those books I am more amazed that some cheap trade paperback has the nerve to remind me of my mortality, than I am interested in the list of items. (OK, yes, I am interested in the list too.) But since I am going to die, and perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the best thing to do might be to dispense with lists and collections altogether. I suspect these books are for twenty-five year olds, who have trouble imagining their own mortality.
Dickens was a hot young journalist when he was offered the Pickwick project. A popular illustrator wanted a pretext for publishing a series of illustrations, and the publisher was looking for someone to supply some narrative to fill in around the pictures. The pictures were to be of a “sporting club,” and they were to be satirical—people in extravagant hunting costumes discharging their pieces ineptly, and so forth. The first few chapters did little to transcend this flimsy concept, but as he wrote, Dickens began to realize that he was, in fact, Charles Dickens. Characters, descriptions and themes began to pour forth. The sporting club gave way to intrigue, adventure, and romance. A star was born. As monthly installments were published, Dickens took note of “what worked,” and promptly supplied more of those commodities. Sam Weller, the shrewd and practical cockney manservant, introduced as a peripheral character in one episode, was brought back and made a key cast member. It wasn’t “reality” novel-writing, but it had that element of audience interaction that keeps shows like American Idol on everyone’s lips.
After the fourth installment, the illustrator shot himself. A new illustrator was found, but the ratio of text to illustrations was increased. Advantage: Dickens. For the modern reader, reading Pickwick is somewhat like watching a sitcom without the laugh track. Or like watching the performers on American Idol without the judges and the audience. You’re seeing only one half of a dialogue between artist and audience.
You’re also lacking the cultural perspective of the early Victorian English audience. The knowledge of current events, the gentle satire regarding master/servant relationships, etc. Humor can either be “of the moment,” full of satire and parodies of people and events in the news, or more what I would call, for lack of a better word, universal. When they rebroadcast ancient Saturday Night Live episodes, I suspect they edit out skits making fun of Edmund Muskie, Billy Carter and the like—the fact that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is “still dead” isn’t nearly as funny as it was 35 years ago, when the audience knew that the Spanish dictator had clung to life for months before finally expiring. Monty Python skits, in contrast, seem mostly free of such cultural specifics, and so have aged better.
Of course the ultimate challenge in this regard is Shakespeare. Consider “Romeo and Juliet”—there are parts of that play that are chock full of cultural references and topical jokes that nobody today can appreciate—unless they read the footnotes carefully. Yet they assign this play to high schoolers. Of course, the play does work on other levels at the same time. It’s interesting when you watch a Shakespeare comedy performed—especially a low-budget production without famous actors. Productions that cannot rely on opulence and acting skill to blow you away. The actors always make sure they give the audience plenty to laugh at. I always wonder—how much of this humor was put there by Shakespeare (and typically missed by me as I read the play and tried to navigate the iambic pentameter), and how much is part of the cultural inheritance of the play—gestures and effects handed down through the centuries as younger performers absorbed the tricks and gambits of their predecessors. Not unlike magicians. There is a third possibility—that actors and directors can invent humorous readings, gestures, and “bits” without any guidance from either the bard or their mentors. I suspect that when you watch a Shakespearean comedy you’re seeing a blend of all three of these potential sources of humor: what Shakespeare put in, theatrical traditions, and new inventions.
In any case, there is no way for us today to recapture the excitement that would have been felt by the original readers of The Pickwick Papers. We can only admire it the way we admire surviving Roman ampitheaters, with only perhaps 60% of the rock still in place.
But who would want to read it today? A massive Victorian novel without sex, violence, or vampires. Even among Dickens novels, I don’t think it would be in many “top five” lists. I wasn’t really hankering to read it myself, but I had an old Penguin paperback that I had picked up. I liked the cover illustration, I liked the heft of it, and so I started reading, sort of on a self-dare.
I work harder than most people at deciding what books I should read, what movies I should see, and what music I should listen to. For that very reason, I think it’s good idea every so often to “take a flyer.” Taste can be confining, a groove we wear in what the world has to offer. I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to have too much faith in your own taste. Have you heard of “desert island discs”?—this is a genre of music writing where people are asked what five records they would want to have with them if they were stranded on a desert island. (Or rather, they answer without actually being asked.) I realize the real question behind this conceit is merely “What are your favorite records?”, but I can’t help trying to imagine what it would be like if you really were forced to spend the rest of your life under a cocoanut tree with a record player and five records. Maybe one of those wind-up grammaphones with a speaker like a big lily. I suspect that after a few weeks it would not matter what the discs were—or rather, it would matter in ways that we could not imagine in advance. Maybe we’d just want happy music, or singable music, or music that told a story. Would we want Sgt. Peppers or Dark Side of the Moon? I might be just as happy with Celine Dion, Tom Jones, and The Beegees as I would be with the Beatles, Bach, and Charlie Parker. Because taste is an extravagance, a way of coping with surplus. Music is music.
So am I comparing The Pickwick Papers with Celine Dion? Not exactly—but both have sustained and entertained a lot of people. Given the choice, though, I’ll take Pickwick. (Unless I’m in Vegas and I get a good deal on tickets.)
I was somewhat indifferently entertained while reading Pickwick. I didn’t work at it, as I would have if I’d owed somebody a term paper afterwards. There were some good bits of comedy and lots of great period detail about coaches and inns and servants. After finishing the book I went back and read the introduction, and began to understand how to “value” Pickwick. I felt a little guilty for not having recognized all the virtues of the book, all the things that make it remarkable. Pickwick was just a country I was passing through—I dipped a little into what it had to offer, as I would try a few Portuguese dishes if I were staying in Lisbon. Or maybe Dickens is the country, and Pickwick is a small coastal port. In any case, I’m not going to try to be your guide to the Pickwick experience, or to suggest for a moment that this is a trip you should put at the top of your list. Which puts me in mind of those “1000 X’s to See/Do/Hear Before You Die” books—another consumer trope that I am rather inclined to look at too literally. Whenever I see one of those books I am more amazed that some cheap trade paperback has the nerve to remind me of my mortality, than I am interested in the list of items. (OK, yes, I am interested in the list too.) But since I am going to die, and perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the best thing to do might be to dispense with lists and collections altogether. I suspect these books are for twenty-five year olds, who have trouble imagining their own mortality.
Dickens was a hot young journalist when he was offered the Pickwick project. A popular illustrator wanted a pretext for publishing a series of illustrations, and the publisher was looking for someone to supply some narrative to fill in around the pictures. The pictures were to be of a “sporting club,” and they were to be satirical—people in extravagant hunting costumes discharging their pieces ineptly, and so forth. The first few chapters did little to transcend this flimsy concept, but as he wrote, Dickens began to realize that he was, in fact, Charles Dickens. Characters, descriptions and themes began to pour forth. The sporting club gave way to intrigue, adventure, and romance. A star was born. As monthly installments were published, Dickens took note of “what worked,” and promptly supplied more of those commodities. Sam Weller, the shrewd and practical cockney manservant, introduced as a peripheral character in one episode, was brought back and made a key cast member. It wasn’t “reality” novel-writing, but it had that element of audience interaction that keeps shows like American Idol on everyone’s lips.
After the fourth installment, the illustrator shot himself. A new illustrator was found, but the ratio of text to illustrations was increased. Advantage: Dickens. For the modern reader, reading Pickwick is somewhat like watching a sitcom without the laugh track. Or like watching the performers on American Idol without the judges and the audience. You’re seeing only one half of a dialogue between artist and audience.
You’re also lacking the cultural perspective of the early Victorian English audience. The knowledge of current events, the gentle satire regarding master/servant relationships, etc. Humor can either be “of the moment,” full of satire and parodies of people and events in the news, or more what I would call, for lack of a better word, universal. When they rebroadcast ancient Saturday Night Live episodes, I suspect they edit out skits making fun of Edmund Muskie, Billy Carter and the like—the fact that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is “still dead” isn’t nearly as funny as it was 35 years ago, when the audience knew that the Spanish dictator had clung to life for months before finally expiring. Monty Python skits, in contrast, seem mostly free of such cultural specifics, and so have aged better.
Of course the ultimate challenge in this regard is Shakespeare. Consider “Romeo and Juliet”—there are parts of that play that are chock full of cultural references and topical jokes that nobody today can appreciate—unless they read the footnotes carefully. Yet they assign this play to high schoolers. Of course, the play does work on other levels at the same time. It’s interesting when you watch a Shakespeare comedy performed—especially a low-budget production without famous actors. Productions that cannot rely on opulence and acting skill to blow you away. The actors always make sure they give the audience plenty to laugh at. I always wonder—how much of this humor was put there by Shakespeare (and typically missed by me as I read the play and tried to navigate the iambic pentameter), and how much is part of the cultural inheritance of the play—gestures and effects handed down through the centuries as younger performers absorbed the tricks and gambits of their predecessors. Not unlike magicians. There is a third possibility—that actors and directors can invent humorous readings, gestures, and “bits” without any guidance from either the bard or their mentors. I suspect that when you watch a Shakespearean comedy you’re seeing a blend of all three of these potential sources of humor: what Shakespeare put in, theatrical traditions, and new inventions.
In any case, there is no way for us today to recapture the excitement that would have been felt by the original readers of The Pickwick Papers. We can only admire it the way we admire surviving Roman ampitheaters, with only perhaps 60% of the rock still in place.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
#4: Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen
I found two Isak Dinesen books at a yard sale a couple of months ago for ten cents each—Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa. I read the former first and just finished the latter. The two books are very different—the former is a collection of highly stylized and intricately weird romantic tales, the latter a factual account of the author’s experiences running a sort of plantation in Kenya. But what unites them for me is the strength of the author’s personality, as expressed in her writing. This was a person who wrote confidently and boldly, and I get the definite sense that she would have showed those traits in other aspects of her life as well. I don’t think she was a timid person.
Seven Gothic Tales has a spooky Scandinavian feel, it's an orchestration of effects and sleights and nuances. She chooses the role of artificer, a maker of illusions and effects. Some of the stories are thrilling and exotic, others are a bit vague and dream-like.
In Out of Africa, the sense of power comes from the way the author so capably puts across her personal understanding of her experience managing a large coffee plantation in Kenya. The book is neither modest nor grandiose; the author has a cool, supple, and poised intelligence which can be philosophical, analytical, or sympathetic as the occasion requires. She presents her 17 years in Africa exactly as she wishes us to see them, selecting people and events to give her experience resonance and coherence.
Reading the book in 2011, though, it’s difficult not to wonder about certain things. Dinesen runs a 6000-acre farm, staffed by hundreds or perhaps thousands of Africans, primarily of the Kikuyu tribe. She is friendly with many of her so-called natives and tells us of the lives and tribulations of several of them, but never without a certain paternalistic distance. Indeed, she writes of favorite horses and dogs, as well, and in much the same way—they are noble, they endure, they die. Dinesen’s natives are being run off the land as systematically as the Indians of the American west were—at one point she explains why her people will have to relocate after she sells the farm: “The natives cannot, according to the law, themselves buy any land…” If this fact caused Dinesen any dismay, it is not evident from this book. Perhaps she is just extending her own personal stoicism to those around her.
We read of the blue peaks of the Ngong Hills, of safaris down into the Masai Reserve. We read of the slaughter of several lions, and of a plague of locusts. We read of the ways of the hardworking Kikuyu, of the warlike Masai, and of the Somali, with their fierce Islam religion and their sequestered wives. Somalis served as loyal major domos to the white landowners, aristocrats among the Africans, and you wonder how their homeland could have come to the awful state it is in today. Reading Out of Africa makes me want to visit Kenya, to walk the cool uplands of the west country and to see the stars and the moon and the sky as Dinesen describes them. Of course, today her property is within the suburbs of Nairobi, so I doubt if the walk would be quite as exhilarating as in her day.
I would like to someday read Judith Thurman’s biography of Blixen to learn about everything that she has left out. Even just a few minutes of browsing in wikipedia provides all sorts of surprises—What of the husband who gave her syphilis and whom she divorced in 1921? What of the brother who came out to help her run the plantation for four years? What of her love affair with Denys Finch-Hatton (or is it Hatton-Finch), which is the main substance of the 1985 film made from Out of Africa? It is odd to think that the movie, using the same title, tells of events that are barely hinted at in the book. Dinesen is a ruthless editor of her own life, throwing out whatever doesn’t suit her purpose. I haven’t decided if I think this is quite honest.
Was Kenya in the 30s really so idyllic? Perhaps not. But I do not think it was any the worse for Karen Blixen’s having been there.
Seven Gothic Tales has a spooky Scandinavian feel, it's an orchestration of effects and sleights and nuances. She chooses the role of artificer, a maker of illusions and effects. Some of the stories are thrilling and exotic, others are a bit vague and dream-like.
In Out of Africa, the sense of power comes from the way the author so capably puts across her personal understanding of her experience managing a large coffee plantation in Kenya. The book is neither modest nor grandiose; the author has a cool, supple, and poised intelligence which can be philosophical, analytical, or sympathetic as the occasion requires. She presents her 17 years in Africa exactly as she wishes us to see them, selecting people and events to give her experience resonance and coherence.
Reading the book in 2011, though, it’s difficult not to wonder about certain things. Dinesen runs a 6000-acre farm, staffed by hundreds or perhaps thousands of Africans, primarily of the Kikuyu tribe. She is friendly with many of her so-called natives and tells us of the lives and tribulations of several of them, but never without a certain paternalistic distance. Indeed, she writes of favorite horses and dogs, as well, and in much the same way—they are noble, they endure, they die. Dinesen’s natives are being run off the land as systematically as the Indians of the American west were—at one point she explains why her people will have to relocate after she sells the farm: “The natives cannot, according to the law, themselves buy any land…” If this fact caused Dinesen any dismay, it is not evident from this book. Perhaps she is just extending her own personal stoicism to those around her.
We read of the blue peaks of the Ngong Hills, of safaris down into the Masai Reserve. We read of the slaughter of several lions, and of a plague of locusts. We read of the ways of the hardworking Kikuyu, of the warlike Masai, and of the Somali, with their fierce Islam religion and their sequestered wives. Somalis served as loyal major domos to the white landowners, aristocrats among the Africans, and you wonder how their homeland could have come to the awful state it is in today. Reading Out of Africa makes me want to visit Kenya, to walk the cool uplands of the west country and to see the stars and the moon and the sky as Dinesen describes them. Of course, today her property is within the suburbs of Nairobi, so I doubt if the walk would be quite as exhilarating as in her day.
I would like to someday read Judith Thurman’s biography of Blixen to learn about everything that she has left out. Even just a few minutes of browsing in wikipedia provides all sorts of surprises—What of the husband who gave her syphilis and whom she divorced in 1921? What of the brother who came out to help her run the plantation for four years? What of her love affair with Denys Finch-Hatton (or is it Hatton-Finch), which is the main substance of the 1985 film made from Out of Africa? It is odd to think that the movie, using the same title, tells of events that are barely hinted at in the book. Dinesen is a ruthless editor of her own life, throwing out whatever doesn’t suit her purpose. I haven’t decided if I think this is quite honest.
Was Kenya in the 30s really so idyllic? Perhaps not. But I do not think it was any the worse for Karen Blixen’s having been there.
Monday, July 4, 2011
#3: Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone: The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music, by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg
I had a great time reading this book. For one thing, I am a big fan of popular music and this book filled in a big gap in my knowledge. For another, this was the kind of book you come across every once in a while where you feel like you’ve been invited to a party where you get to meet all sorts of wonderful and interesting people and make friends with all of them. The authors say in their acknowledgements that “the Original Carter Family … gave few interviews, kept no diaries, wrote few letters, and saved almost no correspondence.” But there are plenty of people still alive who knew the original Carters, and their children and grandchildren continue (to various degrees) the family business that the originals—A.P. Carter, his wife Sara Carter, and his sister-in-law, Maybelle Carter—started. My theory is that the authors talked to so many people who were quite glad to remember and cherish their famous ancestors that the gracious and warm tone of these many conversations permeates the book itself. It’s a happy book.
Having said that, I would imagine that the lives of those original Carters were probably no happier than the average person’s. For one thing, A.P. and Sara Carter divorced in 1936 when he was 45 and she 35. She had fallen in love with a cousin whom A.P. had asked to chauffeur her around. The original Carters continued to tour and occasionally perform together for another seven years—the book does make clear that the cash flow the Carters realized from their music put them way beyond what their neighbors and relatives in Maces Spring, Virginia, could ever hope for. After 1943 A.P. and Sara dropped out—he returned to Virginia to putter around for the remaining 17 years of his life, and she moved to California to live with her second husband. The remaining third of the original trio, Maybelle, brought her daughters Helen, June, and Anita into the group and kept the act going another 15 years or so. The final manifestation of the Carters was as part of the cast of the Johnny Cash show from 1968-1971. June Carter, as most readers will know, had married Johnny Cash in 1968.
It was interesting to read how A.P. Carter, after finding that there was money to be had for songs, set about scouring the hamlets and farms of Appalachia in the 1930s to find new material to record. A.P. and the other Carters wrote plenty of songs on their own, but they didn’t have the concept of “originality” about their music that people have today. A good song was a like a good chest of drawers—it was much more important that it answer to its intended purpose than that it be the unique and indubitable work of a particular artist.
There is something really cool about reading a book about a group of performers and then being able to go onto YouTube and watch them perform. June, who I had only ever known as a slightly daffy and rather devout senior citizen, began her career as a kind of Grand Old Opry commedienne—here she is at the top of her form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLFfHRTA9mc&feature=related
I dig that crazy dancing.
June was considered the least talented of the sisters, at least musically. Anita was considered a fine singer—an opinion I share, based on these samples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4e700oABl4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flRnZT438Mk
The Carters in the 1950s knew and were very involved in the careers of Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, and of course Johnny Cash. They were nationally famous. And yet they remained very unspoiled, still working hard to make a living, still driving themselves to gigs all over the country, and still very much a family dealing with all the strife and stress of relationships, money, fixing dinner. When they weren’t working they would return to houses and communities in southwest Virginia where indoor plumbing was considered a luxury.
The music that the original Carters made sounds a bit odd to my ears—the performances seem stiff and the women sing quite a bit lower than is fashionable today. But after a couple of listens it begins to work on me. I begin to recognize how much Carter music I’ve been listening to second-hand for all these years—Bob Dylan’s great rendition of “The Girl from the Greenbriar Shore,” for example.
The connecting thread from the original trio’s first performances in 1927 through to the Johnny Cash days is Maybelle Carter—generally referred to as Mother Maybelle Carter. I’ve always found this moniker a bit offputting. It suggests a parochialism and a kind of emotional claustrophobia—“mother” is a term that I think should be used sparingly in professional situations. But, having read this book, Maybelle Carter is now OK with me. A consummate professional musician who just happened to be in business with her in-laws and then with her children, in the 1960s Maybelle took a job in a hospital sitting up with patients through the night. Why? To supplement her income. It would never have occurred to her that such work was beneath her. There’s a wonderful bit in the book where Johnny Cash recalls convincing Maybelle that she should give up this second career:
In her final decade Maybelle was lionized, cheered vigorously at folk festivals around the country by dope-smoking hoardes. Singing “Wildwood Flower” and playing her distinctive guitar style--the Carter scratch, it was called. I wonder what she thought of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Having said that, I would imagine that the lives of those original Carters were probably no happier than the average person’s. For one thing, A.P. and Sara Carter divorced in 1936 when he was 45 and she 35. She had fallen in love with a cousin whom A.P. had asked to chauffeur her around. The original Carters continued to tour and occasionally perform together for another seven years—the book does make clear that the cash flow the Carters realized from their music put them way beyond what their neighbors and relatives in Maces Spring, Virginia, could ever hope for. After 1943 A.P. and Sara dropped out—he returned to Virginia to putter around for the remaining 17 years of his life, and she moved to California to live with her second husband. The remaining third of the original trio, Maybelle, brought her daughters Helen, June, and Anita into the group and kept the act going another 15 years or so. The final manifestation of the Carters was as part of the cast of the Johnny Cash show from 1968-1971. June Carter, as most readers will know, had married Johnny Cash in 1968.
It was interesting to read how A.P. Carter, after finding that there was money to be had for songs, set about scouring the hamlets and farms of Appalachia in the 1930s to find new material to record. A.P. and the other Carters wrote plenty of songs on their own, but they didn’t have the concept of “originality” about their music that people have today. A good song was a like a good chest of drawers—it was much more important that it answer to its intended purpose than that it be the unique and indubitable work of a particular artist.
There is something really cool about reading a book about a group of performers and then being able to go onto YouTube and watch them perform. June, who I had only ever known as a slightly daffy and rather devout senior citizen, began her career as a kind of Grand Old Opry commedienne—here she is at the top of her form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLFfHRTA9mc&feature=related
I dig that crazy dancing.
June was considered the least talented of the sisters, at least musically. Anita was considered a fine singer—an opinion I share, based on these samples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4e700oABl4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flRnZT438Mk
The Carters in the 1950s knew and were very involved in the careers of Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, and of course Johnny Cash. They were nationally famous. And yet they remained very unspoiled, still working hard to make a living, still driving themselves to gigs all over the country, and still very much a family dealing with all the strife and stress of relationships, money, fixing dinner. When they weren’t working they would return to houses and communities in southwest Virginia where indoor plumbing was considered a luxury.
The music that the original Carters made sounds a bit odd to my ears—the performances seem stiff and the women sing quite a bit lower than is fashionable today. But after a couple of listens it begins to work on me. I begin to recognize how much Carter music I’ve been listening to second-hand for all these years—Bob Dylan’s great rendition of “The Girl from the Greenbriar Shore,” for example.
The connecting thread from the original trio’s first performances in 1927 through to the Johnny Cash days is Maybelle Carter—generally referred to as Mother Maybelle Carter. I’ve always found this moniker a bit offputting. It suggests a parochialism and a kind of emotional claustrophobia—“mother” is a term that I think should be used sparingly in professional situations. But, having read this book, Maybelle Carter is now OK with me. A consummate professional musician who just happened to be in business with her in-laws and then with her children, in the 1960s Maybelle took a job in a hospital sitting up with patients through the night. Why? To supplement her income. It would never have occurred to her that such work was beneath her. There’s a wonderful bit in the book where Johnny Cash recalls convincing Maybelle that she should give up this second career:
Johnny finally sat down one day to have a talk about her life. “Maybelle, you’re not going to work at the hospital anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I want you to go on the road with me.”
“I’ll go,” she said, “but you know I don’t mind working in the hospital.”
Cash was silent for a moment and stared hard at her; he always did that when he wanted people to listen. Maybelle’s concern for her patients was unquestionable, but Cash felt she had a greater responsibility. “Mother, don’t you think your music’s more important?”
“Of course I do.”
Years later, Johnny would proudly recall that day. “She never worked at the hospital again.”
In her final decade Maybelle was lionized, cheered vigorously at folk festivals around the country by dope-smoking hoardes. Singing “Wildwood Flower” and playing her distinctive guitar style--the Carter scratch, it was called. I wonder what she thought of The Beverly Hillbillies.
#2: Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
I read this on the Kindle I received as a Christmas present. Took it with me on a business trip to Denmark.
Freedom was fun to read. It’s about characters who come from backgrounds a lot like mine, and it’s set in the present. It was easy to appreciate the socio-economic anxieties of the main characters, and to catch all the cultural references—to Wilco, to Garrison Keillor, to everything that pertains to being a well-read, over-educated, slightly affluent liberal American in the last half of the first decade of the twenty-first century. When a minor working-class character in the book sneers about tofu-eating Volvo-driving liberals I think “What’s wrong with that?” I’ve owned a Volvo and I like tofu. But I’ve never felt like I was marginalizing myself with these tastes. But I guess someone like Sarah Palin would find it all pretty damning. The other night I was cooking with some Vietnamese fried onion-flavored tofu. It was really tasty. Not at all like the soft wet stuff you get in supermarkets. But I digress.
Early on Freedom was very impressive. College athlete Patty Emerson comes west to Minnesota for college to escape her striving, pretentious and unwholesomely ironic family. Patty falls in with Eliza, who is a bit of a psycho—spectacularly co-dependent, dishonest, what I think is known is some circles as a “borderline” personality.
Patty and Eliza meet up with Richard, an aspiring musician, and Walter, his highly ethical best friend, and, after Eliza drops out, the remaining three form the core of the plot for the remaining few hundred pages. Patty and Walter marry and have two children. Patty has an affair with Richard. No way this book does not eventually become a movie.
The second half of the book was conspicuously less satisfying. Franzen seemed to recall his obligations as a cultural critic, and a complicated machinery of diabolical environmental cynicism was introduced. Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but so what? Walter and his beautiful young assistant create a non-profit dedicated to fighting overpopulation. He and the beautiful young assistant begin a passionate love affair. The beautiful young assistant is killed. I lost my ability to connect to the characters as everything became more heightened, more melodramatic. It’s like when a reasonably interesting crime movie devolves to car chases and gun battles for the final 40 minutes. Is any one car chase really different from any other car chase?
I think back to Franzen’s little dispute with Oprah Winfrey. She had decided to select his previous novel, The Corrections, for her book club, and he decided he would prefer not. I can understand Franzen’s reluctance to be branded a women’s novelist, a brand that is built into the Oprah endorsement. Which is not to say that Oprah exclusively picks books with flowing script and gauzy photographs on the cover. She’s chosen Faulkner as well, though I don’t suppose her endorsement would do much to alter his reputation. Still, it was a misstep on Franzen’s part, indicative of a desire to steer his book to a desired audience and to decide for himself what sorts of categories he belongs in. I feel something of that anxiety in Freedom—a sense of calculation.
Freedom was fun to read. It’s about characters who come from backgrounds a lot like mine, and it’s set in the present. It was easy to appreciate the socio-economic anxieties of the main characters, and to catch all the cultural references—to Wilco, to Garrison Keillor, to everything that pertains to being a well-read, over-educated, slightly affluent liberal American in the last half of the first decade of the twenty-first century. When a minor working-class character in the book sneers about tofu-eating Volvo-driving liberals I think “What’s wrong with that?” I’ve owned a Volvo and I like tofu. But I’ve never felt like I was marginalizing myself with these tastes. But I guess someone like Sarah Palin would find it all pretty damning. The other night I was cooking with some Vietnamese fried onion-flavored tofu. It was really tasty. Not at all like the soft wet stuff you get in supermarkets. But I digress.
Early on Freedom was very impressive. College athlete Patty Emerson comes west to Minnesota for college to escape her striving, pretentious and unwholesomely ironic family. Patty falls in with Eliza, who is a bit of a psycho—spectacularly co-dependent, dishonest, what I think is known is some circles as a “borderline” personality.
Patty and Eliza meet up with Richard, an aspiring musician, and Walter, his highly ethical best friend, and, after Eliza drops out, the remaining three form the core of the plot for the remaining few hundred pages. Patty and Walter marry and have two children. Patty has an affair with Richard. No way this book does not eventually become a movie.
The second half of the book was conspicuously less satisfying. Franzen seemed to recall his obligations as a cultural critic, and a complicated machinery of diabolical environmental cynicism was introduced. Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but so what? Walter and his beautiful young assistant create a non-profit dedicated to fighting overpopulation. He and the beautiful young assistant begin a passionate love affair. The beautiful young assistant is killed. I lost my ability to connect to the characters as everything became more heightened, more melodramatic. It’s like when a reasonably interesting crime movie devolves to car chases and gun battles for the final 40 minutes. Is any one car chase really different from any other car chase?
I think back to Franzen’s little dispute with Oprah Winfrey. She had decided to select his previous novel, The Corrections, for her book club, and he decided he would prefer not. I can understand Franzen’s reluctance to be branded a women’s novelist, a brand that is built into the Oprah endorsement. Which is not to say that Oprah exclusively picks books with flowing script and gauzy photographs on the cover. She’s chosen Faulkner as well, though I don’t suppose her endorsement would do much to alter his reputation. Still, it was a misstep on Franzen’s part, indicative of a desire to steer his book to a desired audience and to decide for himself what sorts of categories he belongs in. I feel something of that anxiety in Freedom—a sense of calculation.
#1: The Possessed, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Sometime in June of 1972, a few weeks after my 16th birthday, I purchased a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed in a bookstore a few blocks away from my house in Flushing, Queens, New York.
I was already a voracious reader when I picked up The Possessed, but also a rather indiscriminate one. In the months and years before June 1972 I remember reading things like the adventure novels of Alaistair MacLean and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I read a lot of science fiction—H.P. Lovecraft was a favorite. I’d also read a biography of Houdini, and waded through the unsavory murk of The Boston Strangler (which I think had a tie-in to the movie starring Tony Curtis). When I started reading The Possessed, I was about halfway through A Canticle for Liebowitz, a well-regarded dystopian science fiction novel. I never returned to Liebowitz—it’s the Wally Pipp of my bookshelf.
I still have my original copy of The Possessed, a Signet Classic ($1.25). The cover shows stiff, shadowy figures in blue and green suggestive of a Russian icon or of a stained-glass window. In those early days I felt attached as much to the books as physical objects as to the words inside—cover pictures, typeface, even the feel of the pages. This is still true to some extent—a book to me is more than just words. This is why I could never warm up to the idea of a Kindle (though I do now own one, which is another story).
I loved the cover of my Penguin Crime and Punishment, with its outline of two characters facing each other, silhouetted dark blue against a black background. What books made me feel all those years ago comes back to me immediately when I look at their covers. Which is why I have trouble whittling down my collection of mouldering paperbacks.
When I decided to re-read The Possessed for the first time in almost 40 years, I didn’t think the old paperback would hold up, so I decided to read a new translation, by the celebrated husband/wife translation team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The book has a new title now—Demons. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that the sinister characters in the book are doing the possessing in addition to (or perhaps instead of?) being themselves possessed.
The first 200 pages are a bit of a slog—lots of characters, lots of names, oblique references to things that happened in Switzerland before the beginning of the current action. (An aside: I read recently about somebody who had the idea of replacing the names of characters in Russian novels with the names of current celebrities, so that instead of Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky and Varvara Ivanovna Stavrogin you could have—Charlie Sheen and Miley Cyrus. It might work.)
Anyway, after about page 200, things start to pick up. Dostoyevsky novels are constructed almost exclusively from accounts of the activities of people in highly stimulated and distressed states of consciousness. There must be 10 different characters in The Possessed who experience an excruciating and overwhelming crisis of some sort of another. Two commit suicide. Events transpire to bring windfalls of anguish to characters, often to several characters simultaneously.
But the presentation is as neat and clear as the action is chaotic. The characters in The Possessed are portrayed with both sympathy and psychological insight. Imagine if half a dozen tragic heroes from Shakespeare had to share the same stage—Othello and King Lear and Macbeth all inhabiting a single provincial town and mixing their miseries and manias.
I think in 1972 I was thrilled by the sheer emotional heat of The Possessed. It was like standing in front of an open oven door. It was the first time I was really transported by a book, and I proceeded to blow through a dozen other fat Russian novels as well as every other kind of “classic” I could find. No more sci-fi, no more Alaistair MacLean.
As any introduction or synopsis can tell you, the characters in The Possessed embody various political and philosophical trends in 1870s Russia. Some are based on actual troublemakers or agents provocateur. It seems that revolutionary politics in Russia has always been plagued by cynics, opportunists, and just plain nasty people. Nihilists. I imagine that Dostoyevsky would select for this kind of revolutionary, given his religious and conservative orientation, but still I wonder why it is that that country gets Lenins and Stalins instead of Washingtons and Jeffersons.
This political dimension of The Possessed is more apparent to me now than it was 40 years ago, but it’s still largely beside the point as far as what I get from reading the book.
The episode that made the strongest impression this time is where the character Shatov, a noble but inarticulate idealist who has fallen in with a gang of violent revolutionaries, is suddenly reunited with his wife, whom he has not seen in years and with whom he had only lived once, for a couple of weeks. She is pregnant with another man’s child and goes into labor in the tiny dark cramped apartment where Shatov lives. Shatov is overwhelmed with gratitude and tenderness for this long-lost wife, and she in turn is overcome with joy at the evidence of his devotion. Shatov goes out to summon the town midwife, who as it happens is married to one of the conspirators who have resolved the next night to murder Shatov. I wonder if on first reading I thought there was any hope for Shatov at this point—any chance that he could escape the tightening noose of his fate, as he goes through his day with his newly kindled hope? This time, though I had no recollection of this specific episode, I knew there was no hope. That’s not how things work in Dostoyevsky novels. Dostoyevsky describes the ensuing 24 hours meticulously—the calm efficiency of the midwife, the careful preparations of the conspirators, Shatov’s solicitude. The night comes and Shatov is duly murdered. Afterwards his wife and child die as well—from disease, exposure, hunger.
So anyway, I have to admit that I wasn’t able to rekindle the excitement I felt when I first read this book. I can understand why it excited me, but I don’t feel that excitement all over again. It was a good read and a profound and moving story, but this time, it didn’t change my life. No drug like a new drug.
I was already a voracious reader when I picked up The Possessed, but also a rather indiscriminate one. In the months and years before June 1972 I remember reading things like the adventure novels of Alaistair MacLean and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I read a lot of science fiction—H.P. Lovecraft was a favorite. I’d also read a biography of Houdini, and waded through the unsavory murk of The Boston Strangler (which I think had a tie-in to the movie starring Tony Curtis). When I started reading The Possessed, I was about halfway through A Canticle for Liebowitz, a well-regarded dystopian science fiction novel. I never returned to Liebowitz—it’s the Wally Pipp of my bookshelf.
I still have my original copy of The Possessed, a Signet Classic ($1.25). The cover shows stiff, shadowy figures in blue and green suggestive of a Russian icon or of a stained-glass window. In those early days I felt attached as much to the books as physical objects as to the words inside—cover pictures, typeface, even the feel of the pages. This is still true to some extent—a book to me is more than just words. This is why I could never warm up to the idea of a Kindle (though I do now own one, which is another story).
I loved the cover of my Penguin Crime and Punishment, with its outline of two characters facing each other, silhouetted dark blue against a black background. What books made me feel all those years ago comes back to me immediately when I look at their covers. Which is why I have trouble whittling down my collection of mouldering paperbacks.
When I decided to re-read The Possessed for the first time in almost 40 years, I didn’t think the old paperback would hold up, so I decided to read a new translation, by the celebrated husband/wife translation team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The book has a new title now—Demons. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that the sinister characters in the book are doing the possessing in addition to (or perhaps instead of?) being themselves possessed.
The first 200 pages are a bit of a slog—lots of characters, lots of names, oblique references to things that happened in Switzerland before the beginning of the current action. (An aside: I read recently about somebody who had the idea of replacing the names of characters in Russian novels with the names of current celebrities, so that instead of Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky and Varvara Ivanovna Stavrogin you could have—Charlie Sheen and Miley Cyrus. It might work.)
Anyway, after about page 200, things start to pick up. Dostoyevsky novels are constructed almost exclusively from accounts of the activities of people in highly stimulated and distressed states of consciousness. There must be 10 different characters in The Possessed who experience an excruciating and overwhelming crisis of some sort of another. Two commit suicide. Events transpire to bring windfalls of anguish to characters, often to several characters simultaneously.
But the presentation is as neat and clear as the action is chaotic. The characters in The Possessed are portrayed with both sympathy and psychological insight. Imagine if half a dozen tragic heroes from Shakespeare had to share the same stage—Othello and King Lear and Macbeth all inhabiting a single provincial town and mixing their miseries and manias.
I think in 1972 I was thrilled by the sheer emotional heat of The Possessed. It was like standing in front of an open oven door. It was the first time I was really transported by a book, and I proceeded to blow through a dozen other fat Russian novels as well as every other kind of “classic” I could find. No more sci-fi, no more Alaistair MacLean.
As any introduction or synopsis can tell you, the characters in The Possessed embody various political and philosophical trends in 1870s Russia. Some are based on actual troublemakers or agents provocateur. It seems that revolutionary politics in Russia has always been plagued by cynics, opportunists, and just plain nasty people. Nihilists. I imagine that Dostoyevsky would select for this kind of revolutionary, given his religious and conservative orientation, but still I wonder why it is that that country gets Lenins and Stalins instead of Washingtons and Jeffersons.
This political dimension of The Possessed is more apparent to me now than it was 40 years ago, but it’s still largely beside the point as far as what I get from reading the book.
The episode that made the strongest impression this time is where the character Shatov, a noble but inarticulate idealist who has fallen in with a gang of violent revolutionaries, is suddenly reunited with his wife, whom he has not seen in years and with whom he had only lived once, for a couple of weeks. She is pregnant with another man’s child and goes into labor in the tiny dark cramped apartment where Shatov lives. Shatov is overwhelmed with gratitude and tenderness for this long-lost wife, and she in turn is overcome with joy at the evidence of his devotion. Shatov goes out to summon the town midwife, who as it happens is married to one of the conspirators who have resolved the next night to murder Shatov. I wonder if on first reading I thought there was any hope for Shatov at this point—any chance that he could escape the tightening noose of his fate, as he goes through his day with his newly kindled hope? This time, though I had no recollection of this specific episode, I knew there was no hope. That’s not how things work in Dostoyevsky novels. Dostoyevsky describes the ensuing 24 hours meticulously—the calm efficiency of the midwife, the careful preparations of the conspirators, Shatov’s solicitude. The night comes and Shatov is duly murdered. Afterwards his wife and child die as well—from disease, exposure, hunger.
So anyway, I have to admit that I wasn’t able to rekindle the excitement I felt when I first read this book. I can understand why it excited me, but I don’t feel that excitement all over again. It was a good read and a profound and moving story, but this time, it didn’t change my life. No drug like a new drug.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)