Sounds Like Now
A blog by saxophonist Brian Sacawa
Archive for Literature
March 19, 2009 at 10:52 pm · Filed under Blog: Winter 08, Literature, Sampling
I’m a little late with this post, but it’s not too late to check out the Blogger Book Club that’s been going on all week over at Mind The Gap. The assignment that several music bloggers chose to accept was to read Lawrence Lessig’s Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy and post our thoughts, impressions, and what have you. Here are my two contributions:
- The Art of Imitation (March 19, 2009)
- The Unanswered Question (March 17, 2009)
The whole exercise has been a lot of fun for me. I feel like I’m back in doctoral ethnomusicology colloquium. And I mean that in a good way. It’s been a while since I’ve engaged with literature addressing what’s current in the field. Check it out.
November 23, 2008 at 8:44 pm · Filed under Blog: Fall 08, Literature
“So, upon that Night, did I pass abruptly from Soldier to Sailor, in less than the swallowing of a cheaply opiated Pint, and found, but for the inconvenience of it, a Dream come true,— there being Soldiers’ sorts of Lasses, I mean, and Sailors’ sorts, and a quiet Brotherhood who appreciate the Sailors’ Lasses who be left, for all the reasons we know, unattended. And now tell me, for I’ll ne’er tell you, of the short and devious Fifer out trolling for trouble, creeping ’round, sniggering, peeping up Skirts,— yet ah, my Lads, most times all it took was to bring out the Fife, and finger upon it some brief Air,— eight bars of any little Quantz Etude, and usually she was mine.”
—Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
February 3, 2007 at 11:37 pm · Filed under Blog: Winter 06, Literature
Martin Amis’s latest novel takes place (mostly) in a Russian labor camp and is suitably dark and dismal. Written as a confessional, the narrator recounts to his daughter his life prior to, during, and after his imprisonment in the labor camp. Most of the story revolves around his relationship with his brother, who married the woman that he (the narrator) had designs on but with whom nothing romantic ever transpired despite his best efforts. At the end of the novel (and the narrator’s life), we find out that he was actually queer for his brother, acting out his male homosocial desire across the body of a woman in a classic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwickian love triangle. Vintage twisted Amis, but without the humor.
January 27, 2007 at 12:01 am · Filed under Blog: Winter 06, Literature
I had planned to start this little review like this: Jonathan Franzen’s The Discomfort Zone is a rather unmemorable collection of personal essays dealing with and recalling, among other things, his relationship with his parents, adolescence, birding, and Snoopy, and is much less focused than his previous book of essays How To Be Alone. Then I thought, that’s not very nice, he’s writing about his childhood and baring all of his insecurities and quirks and self-consciousness that is, well, embarrassing. So of course it’s memorable for him. But besides the essay “Centrally Located,” which details many elaborate I’m-a-senior-and-graduating-from-high-school-soon-so-I-need-to-leave-my-mark pranks, including an almost-successful plot to thread a tire over the school’s flagpole, I wasn’t really enchanted by this one. I had planned to (and still intend to) end this little review like this: Read it if you’re a Franzen fan, skip it if you’re not.
January 26, 2007 at 1:08 pm · Filed under Blog: Winter 06, Literature
Franzen’s wonderful collection of essays tied together by the themes of privacy and how to be alone in a world of unparalled media saturation (and his search for the meaning of writing the contemporary social novel and whether or not anyone cares). With so many media options and outlets vying for our attention and for us to consume—TV, radio, books, magazines, music, the internet, et. al—how do we ever have time to tend to everything we’d like to? What is the process by which we chose what we’ll consume? Ever feel overwhelmed? The book is called How To Be Alone, but paradoxically after reading it, you discover that you are not alone. One thing I wonder about is Franzen’s skepticism toward the internet and the role it will play in our culture and how, if at all, his views have changed in the 10 years since he wrote many of these essays. Highly recommended.
January 21, 2007 at 12:43 pm · Filed under Blog: Winter 06, Literature
DeLillo’s irony-clad postmodern critique of consumerism, media saturation, conspiracy, the potential positive effects of violence, and mortality. Written in 1985, there are times that the book is eerily prophetic: the pronouncement that in times of disaster it’s the lower class people who are forgotten sounds a lot like what happened in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Similarly, the predictions of a tabloid psychic sound a little too close to another recent Horror: “Members of an air-crash cult will hijack a jumbo jet and crash it into the White House in an act of blind devotion to their mysterious and reclusive leader, known only as Uncle Bob.” Recommended.
January 14, 2007 at 1:59 pm · Filed under Blog: Winter 06, Literature, Music
When Jonathan Franzen wrote a letter to Don DeLillo lamenting the death of the social novel and his (Franzen’s) place in the world as a fiction writer, this is part of the reply that he (DeLillo) sent:
“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”
Change ‘writing,’ ‘writers,’ and ‘write’ in the above quotation to ‘music making,’ ‘musicians,’ and ‘make music’ and you’ll get a converse truism.
January 3, 2007 at 8:18 pm · Filed under Baltimore, Blog: Winter 06, Literature
David Simon and Ed Burns are two angry men. Angry about how the “war on drugs”—a war they liken to Vietnam—is being waged, or rather, isn’t being waged. For Simon and Burns, the war on drugs is just one misguided attempt to reassure the American public that the government is doing something to remedy the problems caused by drug dealing and drug dependency. Police jumpouts aimed at jacking up a few street-level dealers or touts on a possession charge. A police department that works to make good stats, not to make people’s lives better. Rhapsodizing over how a big drug seizure is concrete evidence that we’re winning the war. But what about the suppliers who’ll just keep on with the business at hand? Street dealers—the soldiers—are a dime a dozen, pawns in the game. The dope fiend will cop because he has to—he’s not making a distinction between who’s selling the shit other than who’s got the best package. So despite the show the government puts on every now and then, no progress is being made and nobody, no matter what their political flavor, is offering any viable alternatives that might actually make a difference. That’s pretty much the premise of The Corner, as bleak and despairing and pessimistic as it sounds.
The book (a work of complete non-fiction) chronicles one year (1993) in the lives of several people living on and around Fayette Street in west Baltimore, which at the time was boasting no fewer than 7 open-air drug markets within only a 3-block radius. At the book’s center is the heart-wrenching story of Gary McCullough, Francine Boyd, and DeAndre McCullough, a family torn apart by drug dependency and the temptations of the corner. Simon and Burns spent a year (and more than 4 years following up) on the streets of west Baltimore getting to know the real people and their real stories. The McCullough and Boyd families. The circle of hardcore users. The dealers. The woman, who in an effort to comes to grips with her 12-year-old daughter’s rape and murder, opened a rec center to give the children of the neighborhood an alternative to corner life. The Corner is an amazing work of ethnography that gives us a moving portrait of the lives of people who are trying to survive at ground zero in the war on drugs.
The maxim that “the book was better than the movie” holds true in this case. I actually saw the HBO miniseries prior to reading the book. And I was so affected by the miniseries that I thought the book would be somewhat of a bear to read, knowing what happens and all that. Not so. Fans of The Wire know that Simon (an ex-Sun reporter) and Burns (an ex-police) are extremely gifted writers. As you might expect, and what I suppose is blatantly obvious, is that the book gives a richer and more vivid picture of the lives of the people of W Fayette St. Another thing that contributes to the book’s success vis-Ã -vis the miniseries, is that the book recounts the events in chronological order, whereas the miniseries (6 parts in total) focuses on a different character (”Gary’s Blues,” “Fran’s Blues,” etc.) or group of people (”Corner Boy Blues,” “Dope Fiend Blues,” etc.) each episode, making the order of events a little hard to parse at times.
Through the prism of one west Baltimore community ravaged by the corner, Simon and Burns paint a dismal picture of the war on drugs not only in Baltimore, but across the nation. (The Corner takes place in Baltimore, but the story could be played out on a corner in any large city in the U.S.) So what’s their solution? They don’t give one.
January 1, 2007 at 11:24 pm · Filed under Blog: Winter 06, Literature
SLN is happy to oblige Helen and her latest scheme meme:
Find the nearest book.
Turn to page 123.
Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
Name the book and the author, and tag three more folks.
“They all turn to Tae, who puts his head down and stares at the gym floor. The buzzer sounds and the Bentalou players drift back onto the floor. ‘Shit,’ says Tae.”
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood by David Simon and Ed Burns.
Tagging: Patti, Jesse, and Youngna.
December 18, 2006 at 7:16 pm · Filed under Blog: Fall 06, Literature
The McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern has been around since 1998, when Dave Eggers started the not-quite-quarterly journal to publish his own work as well as pieces by his friends, many of which (the pieces by his (Dave Eggers’) friends) had been rejected by other literary journals. Over the years, the QC has evolved from a simple paperback volume into a changeable format, which ranges anywhere from an extremely attractive hardcover edition to a cigar box filled with pamphlets and has begun to showcase not only some of the most exceptional and creative contemporary writing but also the work of many fine artists.
QC21 is another great issue. Every piece in this volume is outstanding—and funny—although these authors stood out to me: Miranda July, Joyce Carol Oates, Yannick Murphy (can’t wait for her Mata Hari book), Roddy Doyle, A. Nathan West, and Rajesh Parameswaran. In order to keep pace with its recent quirkiness, each piece in QC21 is followed by an actual letter received by the office of Ray Charles at various dates throughout 1999 and preceded by a 12-panel illustration of an artists’ (different for each story) rendition of events in the piece, while the front cover of the book has a small flap that can be opened out across the exposed page-edges, creating a 360-degree panorama around the entire volume. If you are fiction-dependent, QC21 is perfect for your daily fix.
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