Last Year's Models

Stoner’s 2011 favorites:

Hot Sauce Committee Volume Two, Beastie Boys: Running wild like the rats in Taco Bell. Originally recorded for the 1964 World’s Fair in NYC, but only released this year. Back to the future.

Runner-up: Several Shades of Why, J. Mascis or Last Summer, Eleanor Friedberger

Single/Video: “Bizness,” by tune-yards (thanks, Feral Boy)

Runner-up: “Black Up” by Shabazz Palaces

Jazz Album: Novela, Tony Malaby

Non-Fiction: Shock Value, by Jason Zinoman…A brief history of American horror films of the seventies. Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, and Brian DePalma tackle “the monster problem.”

Runner-up: How Did You Get This Number, by Sloane Crosley

Fiction: The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach…Life on and off the baseball team at a lovingly-rendered Midwest liberal arts college.

Pulp fiction: Quarry’s Ex, by Max Allan Collins

The Trip: In most current comedy, you are invited to hang out with people you would never choose to spend any time with in life. The Trip is a welcome reprieve from that.

Runners-up: Attack The Block, Daddy Longlegs, Midnight In Paris

Requiescat in pace

Everyone associated with Borders will have their own marker for the beginning of the end, but, for those who remember it, the decline  began with the decision to do away with the book test, famously handed to anyone who asked for a job application. Here's the version I took in 1994.

Tinker, Tailor...

Don't get me wrong: I've enjoyed the comic book movies this summer, truly I have. But this trailer makes me wish the season was over.

Any other le Carre fans among us? If so, doesn't Oldman seem more ideally suited to play Karla than Smiley?

Something "New"

Is this an example of the post-book world which Borders failed to include in the business plan that led to its demise? They should have sold iPad apps? Of course. From The New Yorker:

In 1947, Jack Kerouac took the first of three trips that would inform “On the Road,” the 1957 novel that defined the Beat movement. Recently, Penguin reissued the book as an “amplified edition,” and the app includes pages from Kerouac’s travel journals, letters between Kerouac and his editors, interactive maps of the 1947, 1949, and 1950 trips, rare photos, documentary Beat footage, and reproductions of the the original draft. There aren’t any other apps in the pipeline, says Christopher Russell, the project’s editorial director, though Penguin recently has released enhanced e-book editions of other backlist titles; “On the Road” is available for iPad only, and costs $16.99.

Compressed Knowledge

Finally! Read an entire book (sic) during the post- lift-off, pre- wifi-altitude portion of the flight!

True Story(ies)

I’ve bought & given away a few copies of David Grann’s book The Lost City of Z without reading it myself, thinking I would read it someday soon but not feeling any particular hurry.

In Costa Rica last month, Friday spoke of how much she’d enjoyed the book, and I made a mental note to move it up in my (non-physical) to-be-read pile.

Returning home, I found the April 4 New Yorker in my mailbox, and a brand new story by David Grann -- about a political conspiracy/murder -- in Central America!

(The video is spoiler-filled for anyone who hasn’t read the article.)

I finished the article and tried to check The Lost City of Z out of the library the next time I was there, but all copies were out, with waiting lists.

 I remembered seeing another book by Grann in bookstores -- a paperback compilation of his magazine reportage, I believed -- but the library had no other titles listed for him, and I couldn’t remember the title of the book. (Pathetic, what eight years out of the book business has done to my mind.)

A few days later I happened across this Slate piece:

What do you know? I’ve been reading and recommending Grann since the beginning of The Clock.

***

Stoner's Favorites of 2010

Jesus, not again...why does he keep this up?...

Jazz Albums:

Trombone Shorty, Backatown
The Bad Plus, Never Stop
Rudresh Mahanthappa & Bunky Green, Apex

Not-Jazz Albums:
The Black Angels, Phosphene Dream
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, I Learned The Hard Way
Black Mountain, Wilderness Heart

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Books:

Michael Lewis, The Big Short
Sam Lipsyte, The Ask
Donald Westlake, Memory

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Movies:

Cyrus
The Fighter
True Grit
Kick Ass

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Television:
Justified (Best Elmore Leonard adaptation to date)

Pawn Stars (Vegas; little history lessons)

Hardcore Pawn (Detroit; little histrionic episodes)

(The still on the right could be from Justified or Hardcore Pawn, actually.)
 
 
 

 
Sport:
I'm certain we're all in agreement that the Giants' World Series victory was the only thing that mattered.
 
****

Things Amazon Believes I Need

This is a photo of McSweeney's Issue 36.

from a Customer Review on Amazon:
Where to begin? I've never received a more surprising object in the mail. McSweeney's #36 is a robust hinged box that looks like a middle-aged white guy's nervous (but friendly) head. I flipped open the forehead and got sucked right in. Rather than dwelling too long on how Amazon can afford to sell this "book" for $14.86 postpaid, I've ordered a copy for my grandfather to make him laugh the way I did when I got mine. (If he gets past the exterior, it'll be gravy.) But McSweeney's #36 is no joke! The box contains twelve distinct objects -- booklets of different shapes and sizes, for the most part. I've enjoyed reading or looking at almost every single component on its own, and there's a weird kind of sense to how it all hangs together. Here's what you get; I'll try to keep it concise:




1. "MENU" CARD

An L-shaped card comes wrapped around the left and back sides of the "head." Side one, visible through the shrinkwrap, is an illustrated table of contents. Side two is a brief introduction to the issue. Once removed, this card tucks neatly into the box. And it serves the admirable function of keeping words off the box itself. (The box is wall-to-wall art; not a line of text anywhere.)



2. FOUNTAIN CITY, A NOVEL WRECKED BY MICHARL CHABON

Four chapters of Chabon's abandoned-in-1992 second novel, published here for the first time. Half of this 112-page mini-book consists of the novel excerpt, and it's good fun to read. The other half -- the truly inspired half -- consists of Chabon's blow-by-blow notes on the excruciating six-year process of writing the book before giving it up to write "Wonder Boys" in a matter of months. Reading this, I felt like I was taking a tour through the author's mind. I couldn't have enjoyed it more. As a bonus, the booklet is wrapped in a handsome jacket that folds out into a mini-poster of the drawing that inspired Chabon to try writing the book in the first place.



3. A FOUR-POSTCARD PAINTING OF A CATFISH-SHAPED SUBMARINE

A sweet little painting by Ian Huebert, broken into four postcards. It's nice to see some straight-up art in McSweeney's from time to time. I was a big fan of McSweeney's recent box of 100 art postcards, and I like these four cards a lot, too. I wish they'd included two sets: one to mail and one to keep.



4. A BOOK OF LETTERS AND STORIES

Because this booklet is contained within a human head, I found myself noticing head- and mind-related themes in many of the pieces. For example: Jesse Eisenberg, star of the recent Facebook movie, has a funny letter in this Facebox about psychotropic drugs. I hope it's fiction. Ismet Prcic's disorienting story about a play was disorienting and open-ended. Is it a hallucination? Ricardo Nuila's story features a character who insists that "the brain is a box." Colm Toibin's story is sexually, sensually head-involved. Davy Rothbart's letter is a kind of mental sketch for a last will and testament. I really liked the selection here and read it all in one sitting with the exception of the Toibin, which took me a couple of tries to get through.



5. EARLY MORNING AT THE STATION, BY ANDREW KENNEDY HUTCHISON BOYD

"A nineteenth-century Scot's meditation on irreality," according to the table of contents. In other words: a neat six-page essay about how it's sometimes hard to believe in the things that are right in front of our faces. At one point, the author expresses frustration with "blockheads," and I took a fresh look at the sweaty block-headed box in my lap.



6. DON'T GET DISTRACTED, BY SOPHIA CARA FRYDMAN

This mysterious illustrated story booklet feels, in the hand, like a religious tract. A young female artist meets a probably-crazy guy on the street. He claims to be a retired cop and offers unsolicited tips on sidewalk-walking etiquette. It takes about a minute to read, but the artwork (drawn by the author) is painstakingly detailed, and I keep coming back to it.



7. THE DOMESTIC CRUSADERS, BY WAJAHAT ALI

A stage play about a day in the life of a Muslim-American family, written by a young Muslim-American writer, that feels like an episode of the Cosby Show, but with the kind of more-serious twists you might expect to find in a play (and not, say, in an '80s sitcom). I enjoyed this booklet in itself, but it feels especially good in context, as one of many objects floating around inside a head, behind a balding white guy's stressed-out facial expression.



8. A FORTY-INCH SCROLL OF FORTUNE-COOKIE FORTUNES

A bunch of very, very funny fake fortune-cookie fortunes "to clip and use." As with the postcards, I wish they'd have included two: one to keep and one to use. Extra points for the paper and printing style. The scroll, if you were to cut it up, would look exactly like a bunch of little fortunes.



9. THE INSTRUCTIONS, BY ADAM LEVIN

The first chapter from Levin's new 1,000-page novel of the same name. I've been calling my loogies "gooze" all week thanks to this text. Haven't picked up the actual whole book yet.



10. JUNGLE GERONIMO IN GAY PAREE, BY JACK "L. P. EAVES" PENDARVIS

A ridiculous Tarzan-esque tale, written by the hilarious Jack Pendarvis (of "The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure" and "Awesome" fame) as though it is a 1960s abridgment of a book written in the 1910s. This is a headache-inducing conceit in the best possible way, with illustrations by frequent McSweeney's collaborator Michael Kupperman. This booklet was unabashedly Jack Pendarvisy for nearly 100 pages, and I laughed out loud and loved it.



11. MA SU MON

A brief first-person narrative from Ma Su Mon, a student protester in Burma who was detained and physically abused by the government because she supports democracy. This is an excerpt from a longer narrative in a forthcoming book on Burmese human-rights crises from McSweeney's "Voice of Witness" series of oral history books.



12. BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO, BY TIM HEIDECKER AND GREGG TURKINGTON

This is a fake screenplay (full-length!), "written for Dana Carvey and Mike Myers" (not really -- it's soooo corny) by Tim from "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" and Gregg Turkington, a.k.a. Neil Hamburger. If you are, like me, a sincere fan of (1) Neil Hamburger's signature flat-tire humor, and (2) the movies "Wayne's World" and "Major League," then I bet you'll like this booklet, too.
 
****

Happenstance Part 1 (w/Apologies to The Trail-Off Groove)

My favorite ARC (Advance Reading Copy) grabbed during my bookseller years is a fat, cloth-sized QP of two novels by the crime fiction writer George Pelecanos, Soul Circus and Hell To Pay, packaged back-to-back in the old Ace paperback double (flip-over) style.

This was an expensive push by the publisher to encourage sales consummate with the author’s critical acclaim. (It’s still not happened, but Pelecanos produced and wrote for HBO’s The Wire for several seasons; I’m guessing he’s done okay.)


Soul Circus was his new hardcover for 2003; Hell To Pay was arriving in mass market. Pelecanos was wrapping up his third series of books by this time. I went back and picked up the first of his second series, King Suckerman – because of its irresistable title – and read sequentially through Hell To Pay before burning out on the author for a time.

Last month I finally read Soul Circus. It was easy to pick right back up with the character Derek Strange, a black PI in contemporary Washington, DC who drives around his native city listening to ‘70s soul music and lecturing any passenger he might have on what makes the era (especially “the Sound of Philadelphia”) a high-water mark for American music.

I was halfway through the book when some errands took me to the pharmacy, where I browsed a badly-maintained discount CD & DVD display and saw, amid the weird foreign-label best-of CDs of American recording artists with misspelled song titles, a copy of Al Green Gets Next To You, from 1971, with Al on the cover in that striking blue suit, for $3.99.

It’d been decades since I’d heard Al Green outside the confines of the super-smooth Greatest Hits package, an album that is as much of a disservice to him as Legend is to Bob Marley, so I snagged the discounted Hi Records disc, thinking I’d sing along with some soul on my way home to finish up Derek Strange’s adventures.


I wasn’t disappointed: Al Green Gets Next To You could easily be titled Al Green Takes Al Green’s Greatest Hits Out In The Alley And Fucks Its Shit Up.


After finishing Soul Circus, I flipped the ARC over and was paging through Hell To Pay when I came across this passage; Strange is driving, with his new teenaged stepson Lionel in the passenger seat:

…(Strange) and Lionel drove up Georgia toward Brightwood…Strange had an old tape, Al Green Gets Next To You, in the deck, and he was trying hard not to sing along.

“Sounds like gospel music,” said Lionel. “But he’s singing it to some girl, isn’t he?”
“’God Is Standing By,’” said Strange. “An old Johnny Taylor tune, and you’re right. This here was back when Al was struggling between the secular and the spiritual, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean, like, he loves Jesus but he loves to hit the pussy too.”
“I wasn’t quite gonna put it like that, young man.”
“Whateva.”


****

Cult comic writer Harvey Pekar dead at 70 in Ohio



Police say cult comic book writer, film subject was found dead early Monday


CLEVELAND (AP) -- Comic book writer Harvey Pekar, whose "American Splendor" was made into a 2003 film starring Paul Giamatti, was found dead in his home early Monday, authorities said. He was 70.


Officers were called to Pekar's suburban home by his wife about 1 a.m., Cleveland Heights police Capt. Michael Cannon said. His body was found between a bed and dresser.


Pekar had been suffering from prostate cancer, asthma, high blood pressure and depression, according to Cannon. Pekar had gone to bed about 4:30 p.m. Sunday in good spirits, his wife told police.


An autopsy was planned, said Powell Caesar, a spokesman for the Cuyahoga County coroner's office in Cleveland. He had no information on the cause of death.


Pekar's "American Splendor" comics, which he began publishing in 1976, chronicle his grousing about work, money and the monotony of life.


His quirky commentary developed a cult following and his insights and humor were often a bit on the dark side.

David Foster Wallace Interview, 2003

DFW on humor, irony and the soul-crushing force of American entertainment and marketing that dominate our culture.

First of ten parts. The other parts can be found on YouTube. Again, I would've never known this existed if not for Andrew Sullivan's blog.

“Oh, no, you’re the legwarmer guy.”

Stoner laughed himself sick reading The Ask.

from the New Yorker:

The Exchange: Sam Lipsyte
Posted by Thessaly La Force
In “The Ask,” Milo Burke is a development officer at what he calls “Mediocre university.” Milo is also a failed artist whose ambitions haven’t squared with his reality...Soon, (he) is laid off, left with raising his son, a distant wife, and nothing to do. But a mysterious donor considers a gift to the university, under one condition: he work with Milo.

(His) latest...has been praised for making misery funny. This week, he took some time to answer my questions over e-mail.

Milo is a loser. He stares at women’s breasts. He is fat and overeats. He’s “one of those mistakes you sometimes find in an office.” Are there other losers in literature that you considered when you created Milo Burke? If you were to teach an English class about losers, what books would you choose for the syllabus?

I get what you mean here but I really don’t see Milo as just a loser. He’s disappointed in how parts of his life have gone. He’s not rich, so he’s anxious about money. It’s true he’s not good at his job. He’s still figuring out how to be better in the roles he must inhabit—parent, child, partner, friend. These conditions describe a lot of people, I think, especially those who are not young, beautiful, wealthy, or dead. It’s also true that he stares at women’s breasts and is fat and overeats. A great many people, both women and men, some fat, stare at women’s breasts. But others do other things and overeat. Some people play video games and overeat. Some people read romance novels and overeat. Some people play fantasy baseball and snort speed. It’s all coming from the same place, the deep realization that you are not young, beautiful, wealthy or dead.
The syllabus is a good idea. I guess I’d put “Moby Dick” on it. Ahab loses hard at the end. Maybe a Robert E. Lee biography? There’s a guy who lost in a very big, historical way. I would include the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard’s novel, “The Loser.” That’s a great book. As is the Hungarian writer George Konrad’s “The Loser.” I would include that as well.
In his book review for Slate, Michael Agger asked this question: “How useful, in the end, as a life strategy, is wallowing in bitterness? Should we strive to move beyond it, or is that just more silly striving, the thing that got us into the deep end of the bitter pool to begin with? ”
I didn’t know what to say. So I thought I’d ask: do you have an answer?

Agger wrote a very smart review, so I hate to trot out the old line about how a novel’s job is to ask the questions, not answer them, but I guess I just did. The simple response, of course, is that it’s definitely not a good idea to wallow in bitterness. But do we always have a choice, especially if we wish to keep our eyes open? There are some other options though, such as finding pleasure and sustenance in books and music and so forth. And friendship.

What does it mean to be a cult writer?

I’m not quite sure what the phrase “cult writer” means anymore. I think it just means you have a readership but not like Dan Brown or James Patterson or the other cyborgs. Or else maybe it refers to the fact that I do require all of my readers to relinquish their worldly possessions and make themselves available for sex. Seriously, though, I’m thrilled people read my books, and think about them, and when they let me know about it, that’s even better. I haven’t gotten too much weird mail, but once at a party I was introduced to woman and she looked suddenly stricken, said, “Oh, no, you’re the legwarmer guy.” If you understand that reference, then you are part of the cult, and you must relinquish your possessions at once.

What are your writing habits like? When did you first start writing? When did you know you wanted to be a fiction writer?

My first book was a picture book I did when I was kindergarten, I think. It was called Eddie’s New Adventure. It was about a boy whose father is a thief. The boy becomes a police officer and kills his father. (Good thing Freud has been completely discredited!) Anyway, I kept writing after that, though I’m sure I didn’t know the term “fiction writer” until third or fourth grade.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/04/the-exchange-sam-lipsyte.html#ixzz0kXKaxBR9

...and Stoner pushed the author's earlier novel here: http://welcometotheclock.blogspot.com/2006/04/gravy-boat-stay-in-now.html


*****

from McSweeneys

LIT 101 CLASS IN THREE LINES OR LESS.


BY BEN JOSEPH

- - - -

1984


WINSTON: Don't tell the Party, but sex is way better than totalitarianism.

EVERYONE: Surprise! We're the Party.

WINSTON: Oh, rats.



The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe


C.S. LEWIS: Finally, a utopia ruled by children and populated by talking animals.

THE WITCH: Hi, I'm a sexually mature woman of power and confidence.

C.S. LEWIS: Ah! Kill it, lion Jesus!



Paradise Lost



ADAM: Paradise has arbitrary dietary restrictions?

DEVIL: They're really more like guidelines.

GOD: Incorrect.



Moby-Dick



ISHMAEL: I'm existential.

AHAB: Really? Try vengeance.

ISHMAEL: I dig this dynamic. Can we drag it out for 600 pages?



The Great Gatsby


NICK: I love being rich and white.

GATSBY: Me, too, but I'd kill for the love of a woman.

DAISY: We can work with that.



Oliver Twist


OLIVER: Poverty ain't so bad, what with all the Cockney accents and charming musical interludes.

ME: Thanks to movies, no books were read in the passing of this class.

PROFESSOR WATERMAN: You're half right



…..

Books to Look Forward To

How appropriate is it true-crime writer Joe McGinniss is working on a book on Sarah Palin? I think he'll have a field day uncovering the deep, disturbing underside of this "All-American" icon. According to this Daily Beast article, the book will be published in 2011. It's too bad he's already used "Fatal Vision" as a title for a book.

...

Panic Attack

I really like the dust jacket art of the novel I'm reading, but something about it bothered me.




Finally, I figured out what it was: the skinny arms of the figure at the front door.

Iran Elections Too Close To Call; Meanwhile...

I wonder if the remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three will remain faithful to the spirit of the very entertaining Walter Matthau….ah, forget it.

Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight in Detroit--still time to get caught up, if you haven’t been watching.

Former GOP Congressman, Plymouth resident Carl Pursell dies at age 76.

“Speaking of Pelham One Two Three: Stoner, why do you want to be a hack writer of pulp fiction, anyway?”

A Story About Wayne Shorter

“I remember once I asked Wayne (Shorter) for the time,” Miller told (Shorter biographer Michelle) Mercer. “He started talking about the cosmos and how time is relative.” Miller and Shorter were waiting somewhere – an airport, a train station, a hotel. The band’s (Weather Report) keyboardist, Joe Zawinul, who took charge of such matters as what the road crew was supposed to do and when, set Miller straight. “You don’t ask Wayne shit like that,” he snapped. “It’s 7:06 p.m.”

-- from Ben Ratliff’s book The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music

Thanks and Have Fun Running The Country

Excerptsfrom a new book of children's letters to Barack Obama.

Next

1)There aren’t too many writers working today who will be read fifty or a hundred years from now.

Stephen King will: Much as we do with Dickens and mid-19th C. England, future readers will accept King’s divorced families and demon-haunted bric-a-brac as the true stuff of late-2oth C. American life.

Probably John LeCarre -- what was the Great Game like? -- and definitely Michael Crichton, who passed away this week.

Who’ll get ten-year-old boys interested in science now?

2) My favorite Crichton book has no science in it, actually.

It’s Grave Descend, originally published when Crichton was a student at Harvard Medical School and credited to John Lange. It was reprinted last year by Hard Case Crime.

It's a bare-bones page-turner, with an irresistible premise: Our hero is a diver, hired by shady type to find out why a yacht sank. He soon discovers the yacht has not sank...yet.

If I’d read this when I was ten, it would’ve been my favorite book in the entire world.

Reading:

Can't really recommend the book -- let's just say the author will never pen a follow-up entitled "Against Alliteration" -- but what a great cover.