So Uncle Tony’s seen that pipsqueak’s latest column. Tony figures he can cut the column in half. So here’s the column without the bullshit:

Life. Shit happens. Something we’ve known for a while. Been meaning to write about Big Country. Today is Thursday.

Caught the band back in the ’80s, don’t know when. Loved the clip of ’em chasing chicks in Scotland. So I got me their first album. Distinctive sound. Guitars as bagpipes. Serious shit.

The lead singer Stuart Adamson wrote about Old Scotland, paying attention to old values. All the songs were panoramic, even the love song “1000 Stars.”

The inner sleeve kicked ass. Black and white. Cool compass. What was this? Songs about the land. I felt transported. Even the videos submerged you in another place. Big Country had balls. They were unapologetically corny, unlike U2.

Big Country came when synths put guitar gods on the dole. Spaceship rock. Corny music. Of course! Neat, polished, spoonfed, little, yellow, Nuprin. Order. Easy listening. Like fasces. But we like.

Fortunately, Big Country. Difference. Good times. The Epic Album. The Crossing. Nough said.

Became a fan. Black man with Scottish accent. Goofy! Forget the music. Consider their plaid-shirt image.

So I wore flannel, bitch. Was I Scottish? Years later, was I black?

Live shows good. “I just want to say…” over and over. Then music. Cute.

No more U.S. hits. Change of fashion. And nobody remembers Big Country, despite Adamson’s suicide. Former manager blew me off.

No moral here. Join us. And if you don’t, you’ll commit suicide like Adamson because you disagree with me.

Good stuff with Zoe Heller.

Since Fahrenheit 9/11 came out—and even before—critics and fans alike have wondered whether it’s simply preaching to the converted. But it isn’t just the left who are packing the pews to hear their thoughts echoed back from the pulpit. As self-described Republican Party reptile P.J. O’Rourke asks in the latest Atlantic Monthly, when was the last time a conservative talk show changed a mind?

NPR reports that Boston business is sagging because of the DNC. Revenue has dipped dramatically. Even The International, a restaurant in the financial district, hung a sign reading, “Closed due to lack of business because of the DNC.”

CAAF darting through, in her orange muumuu and some superhero underoos. Lately I’ve been reading and relishing The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand. It seems appropriate to post that here as I picked up the book after reading Ed’s (and Terry’s) many effusions on the topic of all things Marquand.

In a short but interesting May 2004 Atlantic Monthly appreciation, Martha Spaulding reports that Upton Sinclair (Jungle Love) received the proofs for Apley in 1936. (It went on to win the Pulitzer in 1938.) Sinclair wrote the publisher:

I started to read it and it appeared to me to be an exact and very detailed picture of a Boston aristocrat, and as I am not especially interested in this type, I began to wonder why you had sent it to me. But finally I began to catch what I thought was a twinkle in the author’s eye … One can never be sure about Boston, and I hope I am not mistaken in my idea that the author is kidding the Boston idea. It is very subtle and clever, and I am not sure that Boston will get it.

Not everyone saw the twinkle in the eye (though I can tell you it’s winking away by page 7). Spaulding quotes editor Edward Weeks as saying that there were people in the Back Bay who “appeared at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday afternoons asking to be shown the ‘Apley Bronzes.’”

Here’s our handsome host’s, Mr. Champion’s, take on Marquand, pulled from a recent email:

Likewise, there’s the sullied status of John P. Marquand, whom I discovered completely by accident (spurned on by Yardley a few years ago). The man made the covers of both Time and Newsweek and was, to my knowledge, one of the most astute observers of manners between the two wars. Also (and this is the part that floors me), he was able to convey his satire in a way that attracted readers — not an easy thing to do in a nation ripe with great satirists often misunderstood by a highly literal public. Now the man’s getting something of a modest revival (much as John O’Hara did a few years ago). I’d recommend starting with The Late George Apley, which was just recently reissued by Back Bay Books. Also in print are H.M. Pulham, Esq., Wickford Point and Point of No Return. But my favorite Marquands would have to be Apley, Sincerely Willis Wayde and So Little Time. I managed to obtain every Marquand novel printed by making a run of every used book store in San Francisco and Berkeley (converting a few helpful bookstore clerks along the way), and supplementing these efforts with the easy and decidedly non-Arthurian search through Alibris. (Yes, I’m pathological that way.)

Having started Apley, I expect to be trolling Asheville’s used bookstores soon.