The Price of Salt (1952) by Patricia Highsmith

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Price of Salt (1952)

by Patricia Highsmith

Manhattan, New York

Manhattan: 20/33

New York: 64/105

   I think I haven't read enough Patricia Highsmith. If I had to characterize my taste in authors I like writers who are sharp, cruel and unsentimental.  I've got a fondness for genre- detective/science fiction/fantasy and I'm more interested in unusual perspectives vs. conventional perspectives.  Patricia Highsmith ranks high on all these qualities.  She's a misanthrope, she's responsible for an iconic character in 20th century crime fiction and she was a pioneering LGBTQ voice.  

  I was genuinely enthusiastic when The Price of Salt appeared in my 1,001 Novels queue.  The endless procession of sad single moms and teenage girls stuck in their bedrooms has been educational but repetitive.  This was book was originally published under a pseudonym, and the publication history reminded me of what William Burroughs went through for Junkie- both are works of literary fiction published as pulp fiction because the subject matter was too outré for the literary fiction market.   It's crazy how forbidden this subject was back in 1952 since The Price of Salt is basically a lesbian love story with a happy ending.   

 It was, at any rate, an enjoyable read.  I feel like this description applies to maybe half of the books on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.

2054 (2024) by Eliot Ackerman & Admiral James Stravidis

 Book Review

2054 (2024)

by Eliot Ackerman & Admiral James Stravidis

  It was inevitable that 2034, Eliot Ackerman's 2022 hit, co-written with an Admiral, would spawn a sequel, but I am surprised at just so how fast Ackerman and Admiral James Stravidis cranked out 2054.  2034 was a book about a pretty conventional "war of the future" between the US and China, which culminates in the nuking of four cities- two in the US (San Diego and Galveston) and two in China (Beijing and I forget), before the Indians put a stop to everything.  The ending of 2034 foreshadowed a world where India is the emergent power, but 2054 picks up in a world where India has vanished from the world stage.  Whereas 2034 was genuine attempt to demonstrate World War III from several global perspectives, 2054 restricts itself to a plot centered in Washington DC, with brief excursions to places like Manaus, Okinawa and Lagos.  Futurist Ray Kurzweill and his idea of the singularity- the point where technological and biological intelligences fuze- is the central concept of 2054, which is on much weaker theoretical ground than the fairly conventional warfare of 2034.

    The New York Times reviewer point out, and I agree, that while an Admiral might be well equipped to add detail to a story involving nuclear missiles and an American naval assault of mainland China, there's no reason to think that he has interesting takes on the singularity or remote gene editing, both of which are only fuzzily explained in the course of 2054.   The description of a a quasi-illegitimate third term US President, whose untimely death (at the hands of a remote gene editor?) leads the cast of characters through a near civil war.   The rest of the world is an onlooker- China represented via a shadowy Nigerian businessman, India, Russia and Europe nowhere to be seen. 

  There is also a curious lack of climate related observations for a book that is set during the summer in Washington DC- which- people are always talking about the weather in Washington DC, so the idea that the country is being brought to the brink of Civil War and no one is complaining about how damn hot it is in DC in the summer just struck me as a shocking omission and suggestive of the lack of care that went into the writing of this book.  

Object Lessons (1991) by Anna Quindlen

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Object Lessons (1991)

by Anna Quindlen

Kenwood, The Bronx, New York

The Bronx: 8/8 *

New York: 66/105

* This book is mis-mapped on the home page of the 1,001 Novels project.

   Object Lessons is mis-mapped on the home page of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  They mapmakers have placed it on the edge of Washington Square Park, but the book takes place in the Bronx.  No one goes to Manhattan in this book- the furthest they travel from the Bronx is Queens.  Quindlen is an authorial jack-of-all-trades with a career in journalism, both fact based and opinion, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize.  She wrote a memoir that was made into a movie and she's written 10 novels, the most recent of which was published this year. 

   Object Lessons was her first work of fiction- which Wikipedia calls a coming-of-age book about a 13 year old girl growing up in a toxic extended family headed by a stereotypical Irish American patriarch, John Scanlan.  I actually thought the central plot was that of the 13 year old's mother, an Italian-American who marries into this family and spends literally the rest of her life complaining about it (with merit, to be sure).   I found this entire book almost indescribably sad- another American  novel filled with characters who don't go anywhere, do anything, achieve anything or change anything about their circumstances, except for the villain/patriarch, who is hated by everyone for actually accomplishing something in his life and then trying to hold the rest of his clan to his standards.

      

Mason-Dixon: Crucible of a Nation (2023) by Edward G. Gray

 Book Review

Mason-Dixon: Crucible of a Nation (2023)

by Edward G. Gray

Harvard University Press

   I always get excited when I see an Audiobook edition of a new work of serious history in the Libby library app.  That was the case for Mason-Dixon: Crucible of a Nation, which is billed as "the first comprehensive narrative of America's defining border."  Sold!  I love a good history of a defining border.  All histories about borders, more or less.  If someone wants to write a whole history book on a specific border, or the idea of borders generally, I'm interested.   Reading the description, I couldn't but help think of the Thomas Pynchon novel, Mason & Dixon, which is, in fact, a comprehensive (773 page) narrative of this very border.  Edward Gray never mentions Pynchon- you would think he could have pulled an epigraph out of a 773 page book about this very subject.

 Alas, humor is not in long supply in Mason-Dixon: Crucible of  a Nation.  Although there are other subjects, the Mason-Dixon line is mostly about slavery- legal on one side, illegal on the over, but importantly, the return of slaves who had escaped from unfree to free is THE theme of this book, and the line itself.   It is clear from the pages of this book- even if the author fails to acknowledge it- that the anti-slavery north aided and abetted the southern slave trade up to the start of the Civil War itself.  Another theme that emerges here is the curious manner in which the states north of the Mason-Dixon line worked to abolish slavery while remaining perfectly comfortable with restricting liberty through fixed terms of servitude, laws barring the free movement of black people and a general expression of distaste for black people, free or unfree. 

  Gray's book covers only the actual line itself- the use of the extended line in American rhetoric is left untouched, while the reader gets chapters and chapters about ongoing litigation between Pennsylvania and Maryland's landowners and squatters.  The Native Americans, of course, do not come out well, but Gray does a good job highlighting the morally ambiguous role of the Iroquois, who were power-brokers in the years before the revolution and were fond of selling the land of other tribes out from under those tribes, rendering them homeless. 

The Ten Year Nap (2008) by Meg Wolitzer

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Ten Year Nap (2008)

by Meg Wolitzer

Upper East Side, Manhattan

Manhattan: 19/33

New York: 65/105

     I'm firmly into the hardcover library check out/Ebook era for the remainder of Manhattan, having exhausted the ready supply of Audiobooks from the Los Angeles Public Library.  My eyes remain in Manhattan even as my ears have moved on to Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and Staten Island, the last sub-chapter of the 105 titles listed for New York within the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.

   The Ten Year Nap is actually a perfect example of the kind of book I absolutely hate, regardless of literary merit or popular acclaim.  It is ensemble novel about a group of post-9/11 Upper East Side Moms, with a level of diversity that ranges from a WASPY super mom who works and holds down a prestigious job to a Jewish lady who inherited a shitty one bedroom apartment from her merchant parents, where she lives with her puppeteer husband and their kids.  The link between the Mom group is a private grade school where their children attend.

 

  Wolitzer weaves together several of these characters and gives each their own voice.  Unfortunately for the reader, none of the individual episodes are particularly interesting:  An affair! A husband cheating on his expense reports (!?!).  A mother who is afraid she doesn't love her adopted Romanian orphan baby, who also might be developmentally delayed.   As with all novels documenting the vicissitudes of life for the generally well off and well educated, I can't shake the feeling that none of it is worth reading.  Honestly, all these characters and their kids could have died in a private school bus crash at the end of the book and I would have gone, "Huh." and moved on with my life.  In fact, such an ending would have been amazing here. 

Alice Munro Died!

 Alice Munro Died!

  RIP to Alice Munro, Canadian short-story writer and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature.   I've read one of her books and listened to two Audiobooks- all in 2019.  She was one of the most notable omissions from the first edition of the 1,001 Books To Read Before You Die list, which was then corrected in the first revision.   Alice Munro has done more for the literary prestige of the short story in the past two decades than any than any other author.    For me, personally, she is a key author in developing this idea that the purpose of reading literature is to really familiarize yourself with the perspective of someone you might not have considered in the past.  Certainly Munro's landscape of quiet Canadian towns and cities was as foreign to my as any other perspective I've encountered.  She also was a master at giving voice to less sophisticated characters in a way that many other writers try and fail to duplicate.  

Alice Munro, Canadian short story writer and Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Published 1/8/19
Too Much Happiness (2009)
by Alice Munro


   One of my major Audiobook "fill" categories is Nobel Prize winners.  I thought that all the Nobel Prize in Literature winners would automatically have all their books available in Audiobook format, or at least those who won in the past twenty years.   Just to take recent winners- there are no available Audiobooks for 2014 winner Patrick Modiano (French.)  This is despite the fact that Modiano's works are typically translated into English and remain in print (they were all on the shelf at a recent visit to Foyle's Books in London.)

  BUT- Alice Munro- Canadian Apostle of the Short Story- she won in 2013 (which I did not even know) and ALL of her books are available as Audiobooks.  She's got 14 volumes of short stories published between 1968 and 2012, and then there are a handful of separate compilations. I selected Too Much Happiness, more or less randomly, because it was published shortly before she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and I'm of the opinion that the Nobel Prize prefers to give the award to Authors who are still doing their best work.

  I think the Audiobook and the short story go well together, in the same way that the novel really fits the paperback/hardback physical book format.  It's easy to dip in and out of an Audiobook, vs when I read a physical book,  I don't like to reset my attention frame every half hour.   Munro's Wikipedia tag line is that she revolutionized the architecture of the short story, especially the tendency to move backward and forward in time.    That last clause really resonates with me, "the tendency to move backward and forward in time," which has to be one of the techniques of writers that I most frequently call out after reading an entry on the 1001 Books list.   It's a technique I associate with the novel, specifically with the high modernists, though by mid century it was making it's way in the mainline literature.

    It strikes me that Munro has an incredibly low profile for the first North American to win the Nobel in Literature since Toni Morrison won a decade earlier.  I guess that win is reflected in the availability of her books in Audiobook format, but I'd be hard pressed to name a single person I've ever met who has read her, let alone would name Munro as one of their favorite authors.

   Of course, I'm not going to trash a collection of Munro short stories, but like all short story collections I'm left grasping at a sold critical approach.  Talk about themes? Individual stories?  All of the stories are set in contemporary Canada except for the title story, about an 19th century Russian mathematician who was the first woman to teach in Sweden (Nobel Prize committee catnip, no doubt.)

 I listened to Too Much Happiness in a variety of circumstances- it took me 40 days to get through the 11 hours.  Some of Munro's protagonists are men, most are women. Domestic relationships gone wrong feature strongly in several of the stories in this collection.  Too Much Happiness is another beast entirely- I wonder if it could be a novella, it seemed long enough on it's own.  I happened to be flying back from Iceland when I listened to most of Too Much Happiness, and I thought the Russian/Scandinavian angle was particularly well thought out and clever.

Published 3/28/19
Runaway (2004)
 by Alice Munro

  I like these characteristics of Canadian author Alice Munro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2013:  First, all her Audiobooks are available without a wait in the Public Library Libby Audiobook app.  Second, all her books are short stories, so listening to one of her books never requires a huge listening effort.  What I don't like about Munro would be her limited range, at least from what I've seen in two books, as described by the Wikipedia page for this book:
   
There are eight short stories in the book. Three of the stories ("Chance", "Soon", and "Silence") are about a single character named "Juliet Henderson".

"Runaway" – a woman is trapped in a bad marriage.
"Chance" – Juliet takes a train trip which leads to an affair.
"Soon" – Juliet visits her parents with her child Penelope.
"Silence" – Juliet hopes for news from her adult estranged daughter Penelope.
"Passion" – A lonely small town girl flees a passionless relationship with an outsider.
"Trespasses" – Lauren, a young girl, meets an older woman, Delphine, who is too interested in her.
"Tricks" – Robin, a lonely girl, lives life alone due to bad luck and misinterpretation.

  I mean there you have it, Alice Munro in a nutshell. Every story is about women on the margins of society for various reasons, isolated by domestic violence, mental illness or just plain bad luck. 

Published 12/2/19
The Beggar Maid (1978)
by Alice Munro

   Replaces: A Maggot by John Fowles

  Canadian short-story specialist Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in 2013, five years after the first revision of the 1001 Books list, where she was included (2 books) for the first time.  Her omission from the original edition is a minor embarrassment- especially when you look at the over representation of other recent Nobel winners like J.M. Coetzee.    Munro was awarded her Nobel for being a "contemporary master of the short story," but The Beggar Maid is as close as she gets to a Novel.  Indeed, a reader could be forgiven for thinking (as I did while listening to the Audiobook) that The Beggar Maid is a novel, since every story is about the same woman- Rose, and the episodes proceed in largely chronological order over the course of her lifetime.

  Like many of Munro's protagonists, Rose is a woman from a disadvantaged socio-economic background in rural Canada who transcends her origins but faces difficult choices along the way.  The Beggar Maid replaces A Maggot by John Fowles- a post-modernist metahistorical fiction  that confuses as much as it entertains, and Fowles himself is a marginally canonical figure if you look at 21st literary trends.  He scores a fat zero for diversity purposes, and his literary reputation is less secure then his (strong) sales record and continued presence in international book stores.

Gorilla, My Love (1972) by Toni Cade Bombara

Pioneering African American author and scholar Toni Cade Bombara

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Gorilla, My Love (1972)

by Toni Cade Bombara

Bedford-Stuyvesant,  New York

New York: 64/105

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 2/28

   I had to Google Bedford-Stuyvesant to learn its proper Borough(Brooklyn). Bombara was a pioneer in the 1960's "Black Arts Movement" and Gorilla, My Love is her pioneering work of short-stories about working-class African American men, women and children living in Brooklyn.   The stories of Gorilla, My Love are interesting from a literary perspective because almost all of the narration is done in first person and some of the stories are done stream-of-consciousness style.  Bombara utilizes the dialect of the place and time and doesn't clean up grammar to some "standard" English criteria.  

  Unfortunately, combining first person narration with sixteen different narrators requires an intellectual investment beyond what you would expect from a shortish book stories (192 pages).  It's ok though, because Gorilla, My Love is a canon level title on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, worth reading solely on its literary merit and trailblazer status.  You could make an argument that Gorilla, My Love belongs on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, perhaps subbing for a Toni Morrison novel (there are several on the 1,001 Books list).   If I saw a copy in a used book store I would probably buy it so I could read the stories again. 

Lipstick Jungle (2005) by Candace Bushnell

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Lipstick Jungle (2005)

by Candace Bushnell

"Manhattan"

New York: 63/105

Manhattan: 19/34

  I am no Sex an the City hater.  I am speaking, of course, of the show/movie, not the book- which was a compilation of columns that Bushnell wrote on the subject of sex and the single girl in New York in the 90's.   I watched the original show, more or less, and definitely saw both films in the theater.   I'm not at all into the new series, who has the time for a show that is so utterly predictable and devoid of surprise, but I am in no way "above" Bushnell and her books.

   That said, this was my first Candace Bushnell novel and I found it all totally depressing in print and spread out over 550 pages.  Bushnell adheres to the plot made familiar by generations of girl lit:  Three close friends and Manhattan "alpha females" struggle to strive and survive in the concrete jungle (Manhattan).  The saddest thing about this book and its characters is the obsession with status derived from working at the pinnacle of a corporate hierarchy.  I can't think of a worse way to make a living as a wealthy individual except maybe being a partner at a top law firm.  It's just such thankless, meaningless work, and as the characters here are constantly saying to anyone and everyone, it can all go away in a second because you are always being judged by someone further up the chain of command. 

  Any questions raised about the "why" of it all is limited to either a) complaining about things not working out the way they planned or b) idle musing about escaping it all by abandoning one's responsibilities and running away.   That sounds like everyone I know in LA, including my own partner. I was not amused. 

Fin & Lady (2013) by Cathleen Schine

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Fin & Lady (2013)

by Cathleen Schine

New York: 62/105

Manhattan: 18/34

   Thankfully, Fin & Lady, a comic novel by author Cathleen Schine about a wealthy orphan and his guardian half-sister set in Greenwich Village in the 1960's is neither tedious nor excruciating, and I actually enjoyed the Audiobook listening experience.  I've accepted that the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is about representing ALL Americans without regard to race, religion or economic class, but as I've observed before, books written about socio-economically disadvantaged groups- of all races- has a dreary sameness:  The kids wants to escape (or are so downtrodden they can't imagine escaping), the parents are trying to survive, the world around them is limited to a block or two (city version) or whatever local town the action is located (country/suburb version)- no one goes anywhere, no one does anything except suffer and try to survive.    

   Novels about the well educated at least have characters who can make interesting observations about the world beyond their own immediate experience, and they tend to feature in books that have more than one setting.   On the other hand, the problems of the wealthy and educated are far less interesting than the continuous theme of "survival in America" in every book about the poor and less educated.   When I'm reading books like this one- about a precocious orphan and his flighty older half sister- I am quite frequently struck by the thought that every problem in the book could be solved by the main characters going to a gym once a week and running on a treadmill for half an hour. 

   In my experience there is no variety of angst- existential or otherwise that can not be overcome by running for an hour (or half hour).  On the other hand, if you don't have enough money to pay rent or buy food for your children, running isn't going to help. In the case of Daughter- it might even get you killed by NYC cops.   

   Fin & Lady is a decently entertaining comic novel.  It will likely rank in the middle tier when I complete the New York chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  Nothing in this book made me want to read more books by Cathleen Schine, but I would be open to the idea if the opportunity presented itself.

Daughter (2015) by Asha Bandele

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

Daughter (2003)

by Asha Bandele

New York: 62/105

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 1/28

    Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island is the last sub-chapter of the 105 books from New York- that's over 10% of the entire list for a single state, and something close to 70 percent of the books from New York state are from New York City.  I checked out the Audiobook from the library- when I say it was absolutely excruciating to listen to, that's neither a criticism nor a compliment, just a reflection of the heartbreaking AND extremely over-wrought narrative, about a mother who loses her college age daughter to a mistakenly fired police bullet.  

    The Publisher's Weekly review that is quoted on Daughter's Amazon product page calls it "maudlin" which was a thought I frequently had listening to this book.  I'm not exactly a stranger to the difficulties faced by African American people at the hands of the police, and I've had plenty of experience counseling people who have been through the kind of tragedies that this book covers.  Still, the actual details of this plot defy believe- both the daughter of the title and her father are shot mistakenly by the NYPD thirty years apart. 

  Also, the decisions made by the characters in this book are simply excruciating to hear.  Like every chapter is filled with either the Mother or the Daughter making a terrible decision and paying a terrible price for that poor decision.  I can't remember another book like it where the decision making by the characters was so cringe inducing.  It was definitely a function of my life in the criminal justice system- I just can't stand to read fiction/watch tv/movies about people making bad decisions. 

    

   Generally speaking Daughter is an extreme example of common narrative:  A family has a child who they treat in an over-protective fashion, seeking to shield them from their own mistakes or to overcome their underprivileged background.  This then causes the child to make the exact same mistakes the parents are trying to prevent, providing the ironic tension in the narrative.

   Here, Miriam, the mother of the dead daughter, is raced by a religious couple who welcome her as their late arriving, miracle baby.  She feels suffocated in this environment and, at 17, falls for the school janitor, a young guy just back from Vietnam.  When her parents catch her making out with her boyfriend on the street, they forbid her from seeing him, and she responds by moving in with her boyfriend and his grandmother.

   Of course, she gets pregnant immediately.  Of course, they don't get married.  Of course, it doesn't work out, which, you know, everyone can see except for the character herself.  Bandele makes a point that is similar to other African American authors, which is that African American families struggling to better themselves often restrict their emotions to survive, which can then have negative consequences for their children. 

Ms. Hempel Chronicles (2008) by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Ms. Hempel Chronicles (2008)

by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum 

"Manhattan"

New York: 61/105

Manhattan: 17/34

    Half-way through Manhattan but with another potential bottom 10 book, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's dull set of interlinked short stories about Ms Hempel the "cool" teacher at a (private?) Manhattan middle school.  I am well aware that editor Susan Straight has selected numerous books set at schools (not so many set at colleges so far) in her 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.   Certainly it makes sense- it is hard to get more bang for your portrait-of-a-community novel than one set in an urban grade/middle/high school- all the teachers, all the parents, all the kids.  Why, if you are clever enough you can include a half dozen or more different individual perspectives among the cast of characters.  On the other hand you have the fact that every novel set within a school involves characters who live boring lives unless they are sad lives.  School teachers are boring people, sorry teachers. I'm glad they exist but I'm not a "teachers are heroes" type.

  As far as the Manhattan location goes- I couldn't even tell this book was set in Manhattan. I actually double checked the master list to make sure I was reading the right book.  You'd think, at least, they'd go a recognizable museum at some point.  Ms. Hempel suffers no indignities from living in Manhattan on a teacher salary, which I believe to be literally impossible.  It was all very "why am I reading this book?"

Night Song (1961) by John A. Williams

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Night Song (1961)

by John A. Williams

New York: 60/105

Manhattan: 16/34

   The Manhattan chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project has been boring.  I think... this stems from the fact that editor Susan Straight is trying to give equal wait to the different cultural and socio-economic groups and books about the lower tiers of the socio-economic scale have a depressing sameness (so do books about the higher tiers of the socio-economic scale, of course).   How many times can one reader be subjected to the similar struggles of day-to-day life from the POV of poor, uneducated people. I believe the answer for this project is going to be something like 300 to 400 books.  Compare that to the sweep of the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, which has books from all times and places but few that chronicle day-to-day life from the perspective of the working poor.   It's so rare that the times and places where it does happen: English Kitchen Sink books from the mid 20th century, the French naturalists of the 19th century- come readily to mind.

   Night Song is more along the lines of what I'd like to read- a thinly veiled bio-fic about a thinly veiled Charles "Bird"  Parker:  musician and prodigious heroin addict.   Williams, who died in 2015, had a decades long reputation as an underappreciated writer from the "second Harlem Renaissance," but he rejected those comparisons and put together an iconoclastic career- including a critical biography of Martin Luther King Jr. that was unfortunately published in the aftermath of his assassination.   One interesting facet of this book, which is worth reading simply for its portrayal of the Greenwich Village jazz scene in the 1950's, is that Williams includes a white character who has interior thoughts which is extremely rare in books written by African American authors.  In African American fiction from New York white people are either absent, present as villains or presented as well-meaning do gooders who are more of an annoyance than a help.   My sample here is the 40 or so books out of the 60 books I've read out of New York.  

   Night Song is sure to be in my top 10 for New York.

Starting Out in the Evening (1998) by Brian Morton

 1,001 Novels:  A Library of America

Starting Out in the Evening (1998)

by Brian Morton

Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York

New York: 59/105

Manhattan: 15/34

  If there is one subject, artistically speaking, that I would happily exclude from future reading it would be relationships between much older men and much younger women, particularly those that take place between members of higher income/education socio-economic groups.  Haven't we all heard enough about 70 year old men fucking 20 or 30 something women?  It's sad, it's gross and there is so, so, so much of it out there already that a book like Starting Out in the Evening- which was made into a feature film a decade later, for pete's sake, now seems out of touch. 

  I'd never heard of Morton before this book- certainly I hadn't seen either of the movies that have been adapted from his books.  The story here is about a semi-succesful novelist- four novels over the course of a lifetime, two good ones and two not so good.  He's retired, living on the Upper West Side.  His daughter, Ariel is a mess- an-ex dancer who teaches housewives aerobics and spends way too much time thinking about her dad.  Enter Heather Wolfe an ambitious young writer-scholar, who wants to write about the novelist.  Spoiler alert, they fuck.   She writes a not-so-amazing thesis on the author (Schiller is his name) and then he has a stroke.  Ariel gets back together with her old boyfriend.  Can't imagine how this book made it onto the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, one of my least favorite books out of New York.

Bread Givers (1925) by Anzisa Yezierska

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Bread Givers (1925)

by Anzisa Yezierska

The Lower East Side, Manhattan

New York: 58/105

Manhattan: 14/34

     Really feeling like I've passed the hump on the New York section of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.  Not a huge number of surprises on the list thus far, and no Manhattan Murder Mystery's as of yet- proof that you don't need filler to paint a literary portrait of the PEOPLE of New York City. Like Triangle,  Bread Givers lands us amongst the Jewish immigrants on the lower east side in the early 20th century.  It's not exactly my people- who were midwestern Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century, but I'm thinking this is the closest I'm going to get, since there aren't many midwestern Jewish immigrant authors out there.

   I call Bread Givers an example of the Martin Eden genre- an American immigrant/first generation native from a lower socio-economic background who struggles against family (or lack of a family) and the indifference of America to create themselves as an educated member of the professional class.   These titles blend florid descriptions of urban poverty, working class characters and a burning desire by the protagonist to achieve something more than their circumstances.  Here, the protagonist is the youngest daughter of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family.  The mother, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish merchant and the Dad a Rabbinical scholar.  In the old country this pairing was quite common- the husband being a variety of "trophy husband" who was supported by his father-in-law and not expected to work to support the family.

  This was all well and good in Europe/Russia, but America was, as they say, a different kettle of fish, and basically all of the conflict in Bread Givers is caused by the Dad's refusal to work, and his insistence that it is the duty of his daughters to support him.

Triangle (2006)by Katherine Weber

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Triangle (2006)

by Katherine Weber

Washington Place, Greenwich Village

New York: 57/105

Manhattan: 13/34

   The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on Saturday(!) March 25th, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city and Triangle is the second novel on 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list devoted to a fire-induced disaster (Masters of Illusion: A Novel of the Connecticut Circus Fire).  146 people died- mostly women working at the factory.   Some of them died jumping out the windows to escape the flame.  The owners of the factory escaped and were tried for manslaughter but acquitted after one of the few surviving workers gave testimony which exonerated them. 

   This novel is about the "oldest living survivor" of the fire- living in a Jewish rest home in the Village when the book takes place.  The protagonist is her grand daughter, a genetic scientist married to a musician who makes music out of scientific information.   He sounds almost exactly like the artists Matmos, though the adulation and acclaim he receives in the book is way beyond the attention Matmos has received.

   Triangle functions more as a history lesson than a succesful novel- Weber actually does put together a decent third act twist, but there isn't much in the characters or the plot besides the third act twist- just this lady and the scholar interested in her dead grandmother talking in a room about events that happened a hundred years ago.  I can see why this book is included on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, depiction of an important historical event and all, but it wasn't a great read and not a book I would recommend. 

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) by Stephen Crane

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Maggie: A Girls of the Streets (1893)

by Stephen Crane

The Bowery, New York

New York: 56/105

Manhattan: 12/34

     This is Stephen Crane's first mention on this blog!  He was omitted from the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die List...which... wasn't a surprise exactly, the fact that many schoolchildren for many decades read The Red Badge of Courage in Junior High presumably didn't mean much to the UK based editorship of the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die project.  Maggie is generally an early example of American Realism- if you listen to the Audiobook as I did the "Youse guys" accents will evoke mirthful memories of the Little Rascals.  Practically all the dialogue is screamed by the various characters- much of Maggie reminded me of watching a Harold Pinter play:  People with working class accents driving one another insane.

     I loved the 19th century American dialect- a decent reason to go back and look at other American books from this period in Audiobook format. I felt back for Maggie- her Mother and Brother really treat her poorly for no reason.   I wish there were more books from the 19th century in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  

  After the survivor dies, 

The Adversary (2024) by Michael Crumney

 Book Review

The Adversary (2024)

by Michael Crumney

   Every year for the past decade I've spent about a week in coastal Maine.  It is an absolutely great place to vacation, because even at the very height of tourist season it feels less crowded than any Southern California city on a Monday afternoon at 3 PM.   The yearly visits have helped me realized just how much of Maine there is, and beyond that, Newfoundland and the "Atlantic Provinces," which are even more thinly populated than Maine and go on forever.  I leapt at the chance to check out this The Adversary by Michael Crumney as a library Audiobook, if only to hear the wacky Newfoundland accents- in fact, the New York Times actually published a stand-alone review for the Audiobook of this title- something they only started doing this year. 

   Set in Mockbeggar, a fictional coastal town in Newfoundland, during the early 19th century, The Adversary is mostly about the conflict between siblings, he, a profound ruffian who lords over the population by virtue of his inheritance and position as justice of the peace in the small, isolated community; and she, his older sister, who manages to marry and bury the second wealthiest trader in the community, allowing her to live her live as "the widow," dressing as a man and running her business.  It is a dark and gory business- almost shockingly so at times.  Some of the incidents left me breathless.  Crumney buffs out the cast of characters to include the brother's main supporter, the town Beedle, the brother's crew of prostitutes that he imports to the town and sundry others.  The sister has the support of the men and families of those who work for her, and the general sympathy of the townfolk, who think her brother is a royal asshole. 

   One thing that The Adversary lacks is any scenery besides the rocky Newfoundland close.  Whether by design or accident, by the end of The Adversary I was ready to leave these shores and make my way to greener pastures.

Paul Auster Died!

 Paul Auster Died!

  RIP to Paul Auster!  I thought I would compile a post with all of my reviews of his novels- I read all of them in the course of the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, where he was (IMO) dramatically over-represented in the first edition.  As anyone could gather from my reviews, I'm not a huge fan- I never have been, probably because I've never been one of those young, white, well-educated guys who thought he would move to NYC.  I distinctly remember being in NYC on my own (well, with friends anyway) in college and saying things like, "People who move here are idiots, you should only move to NYC AFTER you have some money or if you ALREADY have money."  Thirty years later I stand behind my college-age assessment, NYC is for suckers and it will eat you alive.

  My sense is that his status as a canonical author will basically be reduced to the New York Trilogy.  He began publishing at at time when the world wasn't particularly concerned with new or distinct voices and thus his relevance was never questioned while he was writing.  There is, however, no denying his status as the first Apostle of Hipster Brooklyn- whether that is a good or bad thing is a question best left for others, but on a recent visit earlier this year- my first where I actually stayed in Brooklyn,  I thought the Brooklyn that Auster and his ilk have wrought was a pretty fun place. 

  How many people were inspired by Auster to relocate to Brooklyn?  I think that is his ultimate legacy- as a progenitor of hipster Brooklyn.

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster remains relevant and in print- pictured above is an Art Speigelman drawn cover sequence for a recent re-print.

Published 5/2/17
The New York Trilogy (1987)
by Paul Auster

  The New York Trilogy is a collection of three "post-modern detective fiction" novellas, originally written and published separately in 1985 and 1986.  There is a limited overlap of characters, but the three novellas are not three separate stories about the same detective, a la Sherlock Holmes.  Rather they are three novellas that are thematically similar in that they blend elements of detective fiction with elements of the post-modern philosophical novel that is more often associated with French and German authors in this time period.  In any time period, ha ha.

  Although Auster was never part of my literary experience, I recognize that The New York Trilogy was and is popular, but I didn't find The New York Trilogy to be earth shattering work.  It may not even be the best book about an existentialist influenced detective to be published in 1987, because that is the same year that Douglas Adams published Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

   I'm sure these would have made a bigger impression if I'd read them closer to the original publication date, but 30 years later it just seems like one of any number of self consciously existentialist detective novels. 

Published 7/10/17
The Music of Chance (1990)
by Paul Auster

    Paul Auster is balls deep on the first edition of the 1001 Books list.  I was thinking about Auster while recently reading a book about the formation and maintenance of canons (called Canons), published around the same time as this novel.  The trend, in those days, was to oppose canons and critique the process of canon formation, often in the key of "dead, white men."  Ultimately, this critique foundered on the realities of institutional pedagogy: One has to teach something in freshman English, but it is this time period which gives us the concepts and vocabulary to accurately describe the canon forming process in the same way that I am attempting to describe it via the 1001 Books project.

  Most of the disparate essays in Canons deal with 19th century poetry, but one interesting essay on canon formation for American fiction between 1960 and 1975 makes some interesting empirical observations about what is essentially the current canon forming process.  The author's hypothesis is that the best place to start is the best seller list, and that you then overlay the best seller list with critical response- he doesn't differentiate between critical response before best seller status.

  If you want to apply this quick and dirty method to say, the current New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list, you see quick results.  Of the 15 titles on this list, nearly half are automatically disqualified because the best-selling author has no critical audience.  These are titles by: David Baldacci, Nora Roberts, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, Janet Evanovich, Dean Koontz and John Grisham.   To the extent that any of these writers are likely to sneak onto any literary canon, it will be with a single, early novel.   Almost every other author on the New York Times Hardcover Top 15 Bestseller list can be excluded with a single Google Search:  Elin Hilderbrand (writer of summer beach read novels according to her wikipedia page), Paula Hawkins (thrillers), Adriana Trigiani (YA fiction), Don Winslow (Police procedurals), Lee Child (Jack Reacher books).

  This leaves us with two possibilities:

1.  The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
2.  Beach House for Rent by Mary Alice Monroe

  Since the list is rolling, you have to imagine doing this  maybe 30-40 times over the course of a year, and then toting up points at the end, that would give you your best canonical candidates for fiction.   Looking at these two, Arundhati Roy, who ticks all the serious lit boxes AND doesn't write fiction very often, seems like the obvious choice.   If you were looking for one book to maintain literary relevance over the summer, it would be the Roy novel, and if you were going to bet on one book from this time period, it would be that one.

  Which all goes to say that the inclusion of so many Paul Auster titles on the first 1001 Books list represents another manifestation of this best seller/critical appeal overlay.  Auster sells books and he appeals to critics, this makes each of his books, even the non best-selling titles, candidates for canonical inclusion.  He, like other artists writing in the "present" benefit from the easy access to pre-canonical "best of" lists, typically organized by year.

  The Music of Chance is an interesting novel, like other of his books it blends dark action and European style philosophical musings, with a firm understanding of the role of genre in serious fiction.  His books are recognizable but slightly askew, they go down easy, but stay with you over time.

Published 10/25/17
Mr. Vertigo (1994)
by Paul Auster

  Man, Paul Auster just never stops churning out books combining existentialism, whimsy and memorable characters.  Mr. Vertigo is the first Auster joint I've seen that is set in the past- his current book 4 3 2 1 has portions that are set in the past, and this book has a narrator "looking back" from the present, but most of it takes place in the late 20's and early 30's. Walter Rawley is a motherless street urchin living in St. Louis.  He randomly meets Master Yehudi, the son of a Hungarian Rabbi, who promises Rawley that he can teach him to fly.  Yehudi and Rawley decamp to an isolated farm in Kansas, and a coming of age story ensues.

 Again, as you might expect from a Paul Auster novel, Mr. Vertigo is the least whimsical book to revolve around magic that one could possibly imagine.  Like all of his books before 4 3 2 1, Mr. Vertigo is short- under 300 pages.  It makes for a comically compressed third act, basically all of Rawley's life between the late 1930's and the present, covered in the course of 50 pages.   It practically invites the reader to skim, knowing that not much can happen in what remains of the book.

 Like other books from this portion of the 1001 Books list, Mr. Vertigo is, at best, a marginal selection. Sure, it's fun- a fun read for an afternoon sitting in an airport departure lobby, but the whole enterprise seems truncated.  I think I've made this observation before, but it often feels like Auster isn't trying particularly hard. I don't have a problem with it, but it seems like a consideration that would impact his canonical status, and the extent to which is represented within said canon.  I mean one Auster novel a decade, that makes sense to me. 

Published 1/19/18

Timbuktu (1999)
 by Paul Auster

  Timbuktu is the book Paul Auster wrote from the POV of a dog,  Mr. Bones, the faithful companion of a colorful hobo who calls himself Willy G. Christmas, despite being the child of Jewish holocaust survivors.  Like every Auster novel except 4 3 2 1, Timbuktu is read and done in a blink- under 150 pages, I believe.   Timbuktu is one of the first books I've read with a major homeless character portrayed in a complex and sympathetic way.  Christmas is no stereotypical hobo.  During the course of Timbuktu it is revealed that he was once a promising Columbia University undergraduate, a roommate, in fact, of a writer named Paul Auster.  Experimentation with drugs leads to a psychotic break and a life time of wandering, interspersed with winters spent at the home of his long-suffering mother.

   It is hard to imagine this as a canonical title- any canon- since Auster is so prolific and already well represented due to his combination of Americanness, commercial viability and critical success.   No surprise that Timbuktu was dropped from the 2008 revision of 1001 Books.

Published 4/5/18
The Book of Illusions (2002)
by Paul Auster

  This was an audiobook narrated by the author himself.  I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often. I wanted to quote this from the Wikipedia page about the book:

The Book of Illusions revisits a number of plot elements seen in Auster's first major work, The New York Trilogy.
These include:
The protagonist driving himself into isolation
Extended focus on a character's (fictional) body of work
Writers as characters
A character disappearing, only to resurface years later, having spent some of the intervening years wandering and doing odd jobs
Parallels drawn between a work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the plot itself
Notebooks (also in Oracle Night)
A meta-referential ending that places the protagonist as the author of the book itself

     I'm sure I'd recommend this audiobook edition, read by the author himself, over the print copy.   Auster is one of the most over-represented authors in the original 1001 Books list- up there with Coetzee, like they just didn't have enough non-white men to fill up the end of the book, or they got lazy towards the end.  

Published 9/30/17
4 3 2 1 (2017)
by Paul Auster

    Is Paul Auster a great American novelist?  Sure, that is a loaded question in 2017, does such a thing even exist in 2017?  Isn't the whole idea of the great American novelist and the great American novel itself problematic in so much as it invokes the specter of white male class and privilege? Up until the publication of 4 3 2 1 in January of this year, you could argue that Auster himself agreed that there was no point in writing the great American novel- simply judging by his books, which are typically short and elliptical, consciously eschewing the kind of length and solidity that typically coincide with books judged to have a shot at fulfilling the manifest destiny of the great American novel.

    If you look at Auster's career up to this point- what have you got?  Does he have an Audience- certainly, popular and critical.  He's had best sellers, all his books get the full review treatment and he's dabbled in successful films. On the other hand, he's near 30 years into his career as a well regarded novelist and he has yet to back a first level literary prize- No Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, no National Book Award (that seems pretty amazing considering some of the books which have won in the past 30 years).   He doesn't even appear in the long odds section of the Ladbrook's 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature betting table.

   He's also got a reputation for writing literary genre fiction and a thematic obsession with the vagaries of fate and existentialism- all traits that have helped secure book sales in the English speaking world, but neither of those characteristics have endeared him to the people who hand out major literary prizes. 

  And as I was saying earlier, before the publication of 4 3 2 1 you could say that Paul Auster hasn't won a major literary award because he isn't trying to win a major award.  He just didn't give a fuck, wasn't trying, and was content with his lot as a top selling "serious" author in late 20th and early 21st century America.  After all, that's not a bad place to be for a writer of serious fiction.

   But 4 3 2 1 changes that analysis, because here he has a written a book that begs to be considered for major literary prizes, and in fact, it has made the 2017 Booker Prize short-list.  The current Ladbrook's betting chart has him second to last place at 5/1.  The inclusion of 4 3 2 1 on the shortlist was itself the biggest surprise of the 2017 shortlist announcement.   It was a surprise because 4 3 2 1 hasn't been particularly well received by critics, and at a very solid 850 pages it is not a light read. It's hard to imagine any casual readers dipping into 4 3 2 1 unless they are die hard Auster fans or they've been told that this is "the" book of the season/year, or a contender for that status.   Before the Booker Shortlist announcement, I was of the opinion that 4 3 2 1 was a ridiculously self-indulgent flop by an author who has blown his chance at long-term canonical status.

  After reading 4 3 2 1, I want to hail it as a major work- partially because I read the damn 850 pages and saying it is a great book justifies the investment of time.  I think an aspect of this book which makes it difficult to judge is the unabashedly retro bildungsroman story of a non-religious  male Jew growing up in the New York City in the mid to late 20th century.   The meta fictional device that somewhat obscures the retro feel is that Auster tells four different versions of the same life, from birth through young adulthood.  Each version is different as it relates the narrator and his personal life, but the "outside world" remains the same in each version.  For example, the student unrest at Columbia around the time of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War itself, and all major historical events from the time period depicted remain true to "life."

  Any cursory survey of the reviews of 4 3 2 1 make it clear that the narrator is a stand in for Auster himself.  One important plot point, the sudden death of a friend at summer camp when he was a young adolescent- occurs both in the real life of Paul Auster and in 4 3 2 1.   Auster manages to spell the overwhelming white/maleness by making his narrator gay/bisexual in some of his timelines.  But still- 4 3 2 1 bears a strong resemblance to the work of Phillip Roth and Saul Bellow.  He's moved forward a few decades in time (from Saul Bellow, at least), but the story of a hyper-literate Jewish American growing up in the New York area in the mid to late 20th century is one of the most traversed literary pathways of 20th century literature.

  4 3 2 1 is a book written to win literary prizes, so it's ultimate value is likely to be judged by it's ability to bring home said prizes.  At least a National Book Award.

The Dakota Winters (2018) by Tom Barbash

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Dakota Winters (2018)

by Tom Barbash

1 W 72nd St, New York, NY 10023 

New York: 55/105

Manhattan: 11/34

 I wanted to dislike this well-observed book about life in The Dakota- famous residence of John Lennon and others- set in 1979/80- right before Lennon was murdered, but I just couldn't dislike it.   Whatever the merits of basing your work of fiction on the very real John Lennon, whose murder forms the end point of the plot, The Dakota Winters is an affecting portrait of NYC in the bad 70's.    Personally, I don't hold with the good/bad dichotomy that surrounds the narrative of US city life.  In my mind, the bad is part of what you should WANT in city living.  If you don't want the BAD go live in the suburbs where that stuff doesn't exist.  If you do live in a city with some negative energy, learn to embrace it, or at least come to terms with it, and shut the fuck up about it already.

   Not that Anton Winters, the narrator sees a huge amount of the bad beyond what is filtered through the screen of his father, Buddy Winters, a Charlie Rose-esque figure who recently had a mental breakdown on the live tv and walked off his highly succesful late night network talk show.  Son Anton was in Gabon at the time, in the Peace Corp and has returned home after fighting off a bad case of malaria in Africa.  Now Anton is back, and by back I mean he is living in his parent's place at famed building The Dakota.  His neighbors include, among others, John Lennon- Barbash/Anton pay lipservice to the others- Leonard Bernstein is mentioned at least a half dozen times but never shows up, but Lennon is front of center.  I would say I was surprised that there wasn't more controversy back in 2018, but I suppose his estate must have simply signed off on the portrayal.  The Lennon character refers to bad behavior in public in the past tense, but you never see him hitting women or doing drugs beyond marijuana in this book.

  The plot is a bildungsroman with influences of Stefan Zweig, Whit Stillman and Wes Anderson- though it is probably more accurate to say that Barbash and Anderson read the same books growing up.  Basically, it is the world of a privileged, eccentric extremely nuclear (no grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins)  Upper West Side showbusiness family over this period of time.   Barbash does a great job, and especially if you are a John Lennon fan and a Wes Anderson fan- The Dakota Winters will hit a sweet spot.

  It makes for a good listen because it's basically just Anton Winter talking for the entire book or having conversations with other people- no challenging literary technique at work here, and it isn't too long- under ten hours. 

  While I was a considering this post, I also had the insight that the book review rating system that Lithub uses:  "Rave"/"Mixed"/"Pan" is really accurate- there only are those three categories since book reviewers rarely if ever assign numbers to their reviews a la music and film critics.  The vast majority of reviews- maybe 80 percent? Are in the mixed/respectful category where you might get a heavier description of the plot/characters but the less in the way or endorsement, or a cautious endorsement at the end.  Raves usually lead with the Rave and will indulge in hyperbole.  Raves also discuss the author and issues outside of the book itself far more frequently as a way to give context to the rave.   Pans are the rarest- considering the number of authors who review books it is easy to see why only the bravest/stupidest people out and out pan a new release of literary fiction- karma is a bitch.

Rainey Royal (2014) by Dylan Landis

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Rainey Royal (2014)

by Dylan Landis

Greenwich Village, New York

New York:  54/105

Manhattan: 10/34

  Rainey Royal by Dylan Landis belongs to a well established category in 1,001 Novels: A Library of Ameria, a bildungsroman written from the POV of a quirky teenage girl grappling with difficult family circumstances.  The characteristics of the protagonist. difficult family circumstances and geographic location change, but not much else.  As an example of things that don't change from book-to-book: Use of a first-person narrator with framing from an unnamed third person narrator, a narrative arc that starts just before puberty and ends after puberty, parents who "work" in a wholly unconvincing way and who say things real parents never tell their children. 

 

  Here, we are dealing with the white daughter of a single dad who is a jazz musician in Greenwich Village in the 1970's.  The most unusual aspect of this novel is that Landis uses a format of linked short stories rather than conventional straight chronological narration.  Not that I noticed, I thought she was just skipping forward in time.   Rainey and her family weren't particularly interesting, they reminded me of lots of troubled/artistic families I knew in the Bay Area growing up in the 1980's and 1990's.   Nor, for that matter, is the author's depiction of Greenwich Village in the 1970's.   There just wasn't much for me love about this book.

Event Preview: Mvtant Releases New Track from Forthcoming LP Electric Body Horror

 Event Preview:

Mvtant Releases New Track From Forthcoming LP 

Electric Body Horror

"Kanashibari"

   Mario was working with Joseph Mvtant before I was back in the picture with Dream Recordings, but I heartily approve of the man and his music- he tours as a one piece, he tours A LOT and he's got a positive attitude about posting on social media.  His streaming numbers have been the issue.  We released his compilation record back in April of 2021 and his Spotify monthly number was under 2000.   Already at this point, we knew he was touring, that he had toured, that people liked the live show etc.  So we were surprised and alarmed when, after that release, his streaming number didn't move. 

   At the time, we chalked it up to the ongoing COVID issues surrounding touring, the idea being that he couldn't really go out and play shows like he wanted to, and was capable of doing.  So, my specific reaction to that situation- this is like- 2022 or so, was to suggest that we do a tape only covers album that would allow us to put another LP worth of material onto Spotify and associate him with the acts that he covers- that being one of algorithmical principles of streaming: Like attracts like.   So I had that idea in 2022 and then the tape was released in July of 2023.  I think that was the right move because it got him above 2000 monthly listeners and then eventually to 3000 monthly listeners before we released the first single from this LP, his first, original songs LP that isn't a compilation. 

   We released the first single two weeks ago, which was a bit of a rush job from the label perspective but was a function of the artist looking at it from his own perspective (understandably)- that he wanted merch for his upcoming tour, that everything was taking too long (common complaint with artists and the vinyl production process no matter how much you may caution them about potential production issues.)  But, my conversations with Mario have been, "Well, do what you want and what he wants."  An artist who has less than 5000 monthly listeners, it's more a goal to simply credibly release the record- the vinyl record, the distribution to DSP's and some level of marketing- these days you don't really need "PR" at the lower levels of the industry because social media can get you to the same place (i.e. not very far).

  If you release a record for an Artist with 5000 monthly listeners and you end up multiplying the number ten fold, say, to 50,000, that's going to be more a function of those 5000 listeners actually LIKING the songs and LISTENING to them more than once.  Spotify is the ultimate truthteller in that regard, because if you have some amount of fans- a measurable amount, and you tour, and you put out your record in a physical format, and at the end of the year or whatever cycle you have, the number hasn't increased... that means that the people who ALREADY listen to your music don't like your songs very much.  It means they haven't been listening to your music month after month, or obsessively within the same month, and they haven't been telling their friends about you, or playing your music for your friends. 

   However, if you put out an actual record, you have an additional data point, which is whether the actual record sells or not.  There are plenty of artists out there who haven negligible Spotify streaming numbers but are capable of selling hundreds if not thousands of vinyl records.  Similarly, there are plenty of (mostly older) artists who can sell dozens, hundred and thousands of concert tickets without the commensurate streaming numbers, and vice versa to all those metrics.  The point being that you have to do all these things to be able to measure the results, and if you don't have multiple points of measurement, success on a single data point can be deceptive or false. 

  Specifically, streaming numbers are easily increased via manipulation.  Paying for the use of a "streaming farm" or a service that contracts with a streaming farm is easy enough and although I haven't looked into it, I'd bet it is pretty affordable- i.e. I'm sure you could obtain measurable results with under 500 dollars a month.  My sense is that is a route 100% embraced by artists as a means to essentially trick the different parts of the music industry: labels, booking agents, managers, or it's something that artists and managers work on together.  My sense is that the labels don't do this directly but that perhaps they don't put a stop to it if the artist is doing it on their own account. 

  Generally speaking, you can presume that monthly streaming numbers under a hundred thousand are legit, beyond that, there is reason to interrogate any artist that shows a monthly streaming figure above five million listeners a month.  At that point, it likely pays to spend the money in terms of how it increases your ability to book bigger venues etc.  It also increases the likelihood of exposure, such as when one of these sort of artists books an arena tour and it flops.  That happens all the time, particularly in hip hop.   My sense is that the practice is endemic in the world of hip hop, that it happens often in the world of non-US genres- K-Pop, Afrobeat, etc and that it is less prevalent in the world of rock, indie, folk etc, because those folks aren't familiar with the underlying scamming strategies.   Any Top 200 Billboard artist is potentially suspect.

   The thing I have learned about Mvtant over the past few years is that he does sell records- -plenty of them- no worries there.  I've learned that he tours like a literally demon- that box is very much checked.  I know that his Spotify streaming numbers are of concern to his booking agent, and his low number limits his fee when he tours, and therefore it is in everyone's interest to move that number up.  And I know that in the last week he has finally moved above 4000- 4379 as of today, but it represents upward movement after the release of a single from a forthcoming record.   From my perspective, that of the label, the data looks promising.  I'm sure there will be poachers soon enough, which is how you know you've succeeded it at my level of the business:  When the poachers show up to take your artists. 

  

Kairos (2023) by Jenny Erpenbeck

German author Jenny Erpenbeck

Book Review

Kairos (2023)

by Jenny Erpenbeck

  German author Jenny Erpenbeck is one of those non-English language authors who seemingly emerges into the Anglo literary sphere overnight, only for readers to learn that she's been doing it for years and is, in fact, a contender for the Nobel Prize.  It all came as news to me!  First, Kairos showed up on my radar when it was nominated for the Booker International Prize.  I checked out the Ebook from the library, looked at the summary, "Much younger woman and much older man have affair during the collapse of East Germany", and let the check out lapse.  Then, Kairos got nominated for the Booker International shortlist and I sighed and checked the still-available Ebook out from the library and read the book.

   I think I've said before- and recently, that the "Much younger woman, much older man" literary plot is one of my least favorite- just behind "Wealthy and well educated urban American couple gets divorced", and "well educated American man or woman has a crisis involving their values."  Who are these older men obsessed with banging women just out of their teens- or in this case- a 19 year old?  I'm convinced that is men who didn't actually have sex with 19 year olds WHEN THEY WERE THAT AGE, and then spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for it.  It's sad, really, male desire.   At least, these days, the book is more likely to be written by a woman than a man.

    Kairos does gets points for depicting the East Germany landscape of the pre-collapse era- I love me some 80's Communist country milieu, but I didn't share the love that reviewers have felt for the story.  I'm going to feel dumb about this review in ten years when Erpenbeck wins the Nobel.

The House of Mirth (1905) by Edith Wharton

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The House of Mirth (1905) 

by Edith Wharton

New York City, New York

New York: 53/105

Manhattan: 9/34

   I'm really cruising through Manhattan on the strength of all the books I've already read- mostly for the 1,001 Novels to Read Before You Die project.  The House of Mirth is another one of those cross-over titles.  I'm not a huge fan of Edith Wharton although it is hard to ignore her status as a fore-runner of our modern, celebrity obsessed culture.  Here is the post I wrote almost ten years ago, back in 2013:

Of course Gillian Anderson has played Lily Bart in a movie version of Edith Wharton's 1905 novel, The House of Mirth

Published 11/12/13

The House of Mirth (1905)
by Edith Wharton

  I read this whole novel under the mistaken impression that the Author was Evelyn Waugh.  So.... yeah.  Evelyn Waugh is a dude, of course.  Pretty funny that. Although the modernity of milieu (upper class New Yorkers around the turn of the century) is fresh, the story is a familiar one, the decline and fall of a young woman with taste and no money, raised to marry, and who fails to marry.

  Hard to imagine that Henry James was in his proto-stream of consciousness mode at exactly the same time Wharton was turning out work that could have been published 80 years before without even changing the names of the characters.  Frankly, I preferred The House of Mirth to James' dense and near unreadable The Ambassadors.  They both document the same people, more or less, but The House of Mirth is a lark and The Ambassadors is a slog, and The Golden Bowl is damn near unreadable.  All three books were released within a couple years of one another but the difference between Wharton and James is like the difference between a horse drawn carriage and a car.   Some surface similarities, but the car has an engine, and the carriage has a horse.

  I rather liked Lily Bart, the Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair) of the book.  To read the novel through history is to become intimate with a succession of fascinating, beautiful women who are obsessed with marriage.  It's quite the cultural quirk when you stop to think of the specificity and limited life experience of the main characters of all marriage centered novels written until well into the 20th century.

 It certainly shows you who the fuck the Audience was for all these novels- the exact same women.  These women actually appear in the pages of The House of Mirth, a kind of precursor of the celebrity culture of the 20th century.  During her decent into obscurity in the last third of the text, Lily Bart runs into "fans" who read about her set in the society pages of the newspapers.   Bart's decline mirrors the later day rise and fall of "celebutantes" today and "it girls" of yesterday.  Lily Bart is maybe the first character in a Novel of this nature who comes off as a modern girl.

 Certainly her tragic death (at the hands of morphine she took in drop form to sleep) is very contemporary.  I can't remember a similar drug od ending any other marriage plot type novel.

Event Preview: Trit95 Announces Self-Titled Debut LP on Dream Recordings

                       Trit 95 Vinyl LP pre-order link

Event Preview:  Trit95 Announces Self-Titled Debut LP on Dream Recordings

   Very excited that this Vinyl record is being released on Dream Recordings.   This blog began as a "local music blog" back when those were themselves a rarity, music blogging either being non-locally oriented or located in New York.  One of the thing I learned during that period is that people who participate in a local music scene are very interested in reading about themselves but rarely interested in reading anything other than that.  Who could blame them?  When I stopped writing about local music, I lost most if not all of that audience.  One thing readers have proven NOT to be interested in over the years is blog posts about bands on my own label.  I've spent plenty of time going back and editing this blog- basically deleting the original posts and grouping them together thematically, and I know that the posts that generated the least interest over times were those that dealt with my own personal record label and those bands.  People don't come to this blog to read about those things.

   This record is a compilation of all the tracks Trit95 has self-released, mixed and mastered for the first time, and produced as a vinyl record.  It's been a great experience, and it has reinforced some observations I've made over the years about working with artists, specifically, that it is much easier to work with an artistic person if you can speak to them face to face.  That really goes for everything- trying to do things over phone, or text or email is 100% more difficult than a face to face meeting, so the fact that Tristan lives in San Diego and could actually see Mario and talk to him (Mario Orduno), was great. 

  I've loved his patient/nonchalant attitude about the process- a common experience for me over the years is that you are putting out a record by an artist with little or no prior experience in the business of music and no representation at any level.  As a result, they are often anxious- of course, because it's important to them and want to rush the process.  I often advise people who are seeking to hire me as a lawyer that the one thing I can not abide from a client is impatience, because it simply does not allow me to do my job properly.  I can't say the same thing to artists- that is what Mario is for- because I would not be good at handling those sort of relationships- but the feeling of waiting for an inexperienced artist to finish up a record and then moving IMMEDIATELY to the "when is it coming out?" stage is common and frustrating- not only for me, I'm sure but for other labels as well.

  I have high hopes for this record, even though it's a compilation of previously material. I think... the way we've handled it and Trit95's lack of prior vinyl releases is enough to make it legit.  I'm concerned that he's going to get poached from us before we get to put out our agreed upon LP of original material, but that is very much part of the business.

   

Open City (2011) by Teju Cole

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Open City (2011)

by Teju Cole

Manhattan, New York

New York: 52/105

Manhattan: 8/34

   Open City made the Atlantic Monthly's Great American Novel list last month- I'm not surprised, though this book really does stretch the idea of a novel- that isn't a bad thing. I read this book during the pandemic after an old high school classmate turned me on to him in an email.  I didn't have much to say back then because I was reviewing a book that was published in 2011 and wasn't part of any ongoing project.  Here is the review from 2020:

Nigerian-American author and Harvard Professor Teju Cole

Published 7/22/20

Open City (2011)

 by Teju Cole

  I recommended W.G. Sebald to a friend and she responded by mentioning Teju Cole, the Nigerian-American writer (and Professor of Creative Writing at Harvard University) and his debut (and only) novel, Open City, which was widely compared to W.G. Sebald when it was published in 2011.  The comparison is apt, though there is more structure and character development in Open City than in any of Sebald's work.  The combination of observational geography and cultural essay is coupled with a genuinely engaging story about the Nigerian-American psychiatrist, Julius who narrates Open City.   

   I listened to the Audiobook which was great- I guess the print edition eschews punctuation and paragraphs, something I didn't notice listening to the Audiobook, which flows like you are listening to someone speak to you- not a common quality for contemporary literary fiction.  

Movie Review: Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland

 

Western Forces flag from the film Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland

Movie Review

Civil War (2024)

d. Alex Garland

   I haven't written about movies since I wrapped up my Criterion Collection phase, which lasted a couple years.  One of the things that I noticed, writing about movies on my blog, is that so many people have critical opinions about movies that is pointless to try to add something.  Contrast this to the considerable paucity of opinions about amazing authors like W.G. Sebald or Thomas Bernhard.  The other issue that I noticed writing about movies is that they are such a group production, starting with the planning of the shooting of the film, followed by the actual shooting of the film, followed by the post-shooting production of the film to the marketing and distribution, to write about a movie is not to write about an individual work of art but, largely speaking, a massively capitalized financial endeavor undertaken at the behest of a multi-national corporation. 

   Rare is the film that inspires me to state an opinion, but Civil War, directed by Alex Garland, is one of those films.  I am a huge fan of Garland which largely stems from me learning that he was the author of The Beach before he started working in film.  Starting in 2010 he directed a series of films that began to establish him as a significant creative voice- beyond the impact of the writing of The Beach and the film of the book, which he also directed and was released in 2010.  In 2014 Ex Machina was released. I didn't see it for years- I think it must have been on Netflix when I finally did, but there is no questioning that it is a really interesting movie. In 2018 he adapted Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, which didn't perform very well with audiences or critics, but I happen to think it an amazing movie, personally.  In 2020 there was season one of Devs, which I watched and enjoyed, again I thought Devs again demonstrated that Garland was working with a distinct, impressive, artistic vision.

   Civil War really delivers on this artistic promise in a way that I believe is not being fully appreciated by the discourse, which seems to be driven on either the message or non-message sent by centering the press in the narrative.  What the discussion over this artistic decision lacks is the literary context of the story of the film.  Garland has crafted a picaresque, or tour of horrors, that relates clearly to artistic antecedents extending to the Odyssey and older.  His choice of war photography/journalism as his vehicle is the only option available to him, or anyone else, to tell this story.

   Compare the story of a contemporary Civil War to the experience of Goya, who, between 1808 and 1814, toured Spain to document the Napoleonic Invasion in a series of 82 etchings.  They are currently on display at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, apparently for the first time ever (?) and I had them in mind when I saw Civil War because I'd visited the museum the day before and seen the exhibition.   Goya, following the practice of the time, simply traveled around Spain as a gentleman and took sketches which he then turned into etchings.  The etchings are frank and intimate, the war photography of their time.  Back then, people can, and often did, set up picnics and viewing parties for battles on nearby hills- it was a practice that extended through the start of the Civil War in the United States, and it was a different mode of warfare.

   Garland, seeking to tell a contemporary story, needs contemporary tellers, people present to document the horror.  Each scene in Civil War is a different stop on the tour of horrors, meant to illustrate a different aspect of the overall message, which is that war is a horror.  There should be no issue regarding what Garland's hidden message is when it is right there in plain sight.  That message is enough, and it's a message that has been delivered more or less consistently, interspersed with the opposite opinion, that war is the highest glory of man, for thousands of years.

  I can understand why a lay viewer might not LIKE Civil War- there is plenty not to like for a viewer who is just out for a Sunday matinee at the local AMC.  My partner, for example, won't even see the film for her (justified and accurate) belief that the violence contained in the film is too much.  If you are a viewer looking for a really wide scope battle picture you are going to be disappointed by many of the slow and intimate scenes that largely revolve around dialogue.  If you have strong political beliefs of one kind or another you might take issue with what you might think are the hidden sympathies of the filmmaker.   These are all valid negative lay opinions about the film as a popcorn, matinee movie at the multiplex. 

  I can't understand why a critic would say Civil War is anything other than a great movie.  I believe every critical review I've surveyed fails to engage with the historical context of the artistic form- picaresque- that Garland is utilizing here.   Picaresque is not an art form with a moral imperative, it is from the 18th century and it is meant to simply usher the reader along through the literary equivalent of a series of pictorial engravings.  Each scene is Civil War is an actual "scene," the visual equivalent of a moving Goya etching from Los Desastres de la Guerra.  If you don't understand that connection from the past to the present, you don't understand the film.