Month / May 2005

by DrMabuse

Tanenhaus Watch: May 15, 2005

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WEEKLY QUESTION: Will this week’s NYTBR reflect today’s literary and publishing climate? Or will editor Sam Tanenhaus demonstrate yet again that the NYTBR is irrelevant to today’s needs? If the former, a tasty brownie will be sent to Mr. Tanenhaus’ office. If the latter, the brownie will be denied.

Unfortunately, certain events prevented me from offering an encompassing pronouncement last weekend. To pursue the Brownie Watch with a completist’s gusto, I’m reviewing last week’s NYTBR on tests alone. The results from last week are remarkably surprising. The Content Considerations section will have to be overlooked, but I will pursue this week’s NYTBR with greater depth. For those who require further commentary, I direct Brownie Watch readers to this Observer editorial, which criticizes Robert Leiter’s review of Buried by the Times and puts the question into an influential context.

THE COLUMN-INCH TEST:

Fiction Reviews: 1 – 1 1/2 page review, 1 two-page Louisa May Alcott retrospective, 5 half-page reviews, 1 one-page Shel Silverstein review, 1 – 1 1/2 page children’s book roundup, 2 one-page children’s book roundups, 1 1-page Hans Christian Anderson overview, 1 one-page “Fiction Chronicle” roundup. (Total books: 23. Total pages: 12.5.)

Non-Fiction Reviews: 1 two-page roundup of atomic bomb books by Richard Rhodes, 2 one-page reviews, 2 half-page review, 1 one-page jazz book comparison, 3 – .75 page reviews, 1- 1.25 page reviews
(Total books: 13. Total pages. 9.5.)

Buoyed in large part by the Chldren’s Book Section, Sam Tanenhaus has done the unthinkable. He’s offered most of the NYTBR‘s pages to fiction. And not just any old fiction: he’s included a Louisa May Alcott Libary of America volume, a translated novel and a modest return to the Chip McGrath days of championing midlisters like Jane Alison (whom Max Millions is crazy about). Or to look at this in hard numbers, a good 57% of the May 15, 2005 issue is devoted to fiction, well above the 48% minimum threshold requried.

I sincerely doubt we’ll see numbers like this again. But because some unexpected force has allowed Mr. Tanenhaus to come to his senses, all brownie bitchslap factors for this week will be withheld.

Brownie Point: EARNED!

THE HARD-ON TEST:

This test concerns the ratio of male to female writers writing for the NYTBR.

Here again, Tanenhaus has somehow balanced things out. This week, there are eleven male reviewers and twelve female reviewers. While most of the ladies have been relegated to the Children’s Book section, I’m still pleased to see that some smart ladies have been granted the pen (and hopefully the keys to Joe Queenan’s car, so that Queenan will be too busy to contribute more of his tired bluster for the NYTBR).

Brownie Point: EARNED!

THE QUIRKY PAIR-UP TEST:

Could it be possible that Tanenhaus will, for the first time in Brownie Watch history, earn three out of three brownie points? Indeed, it is.

First off, Richard Rhodes is the kind of guy we like to see offering thorough roundups about history in the NYTBR‘s pages. It’s more of a history than a review proper, but if this is the way that Tanenhaus must squeeze in his political obsessions, that’s okay by us.

Meg Wolitzer is an interesting choice to write a children’s book roundup. However, I’m not sure if Ms. Wolitzer knows what audience she’s writing for. At one point, she addresses “you obsessive, Egypt-factoid-gathering kids,” which, personally speaking, may have been a valid address to me twenty-five years ago, but now it has me wondering why I’m dunking a graham cracker in milk as a Sunday morning hangover cure. And I’m not certain if complaining about the registered circle is worth a paragraph.

But an even stranger choice than Wolitzer is M.P. Dunleavey. This might be an instinctive reaction, but I don’t entirely trust a personal finance consultant to dispense advice on children’s books. Particularly when she sees a children’s book as something to “lull a the little ones to sleep.” Part of the point of reading a bedtime story is to get as caught up in the narrative as the kid is. In fact, I’d venture to say that had not my father read me the Lord of the Rings and Oz books when I was a wee tyke, my appetite for epic tales (albeit, better ones than Tolkein) wouldn’t be nearly as great as it is today. Dunleavey’s slightly bitter take on children’s books belongs in Good Housekeeping, not the NYTBR.

Then there’s Steve Erickson’s welcome presence. Erickson’s review is by-the-numbers, perhaps because of the reduced space granted to him. But it’s still good to see Tanenhaus throwing in a trusted experimental fiction writer to weigh in on the books of our time.

I’m tempted to bitchslap Tanenhaus for the Dunleavey review, but since all brownie bitchslaps are verboeten, I’ll instead commend him for the steady crop of matchups.

Brownie Point: EARNED!

CONCLUSIONS:

I’m as shocked as anyone else, but Tanenhaus met the burden (and then some) for his work on the May 15, 2005 issue. Brownies will be sent to him this week.

Brownie Points Denied: 0
Brownie Points Earned: 3
TOTAL BROWNIE POINTS REQUIRED FOR BROWNIE DELIVERY: 2
TOTAL BROWNIE POINTS EARNED: 3 points

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by DrMabuse

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

I’ve started reading The Rainbow Stories as part of The Vollmann Club. The last book of Vollmann’s I read was The Royal Family, which was about four years ago. Scott has remarked on Vollmann’s tendency to repeat himself in that book, suggesting that Vollmann wants the reader to become as bored with this world as the whores are. The idea here being that Vollmann considers it a duty to indoctrinate his audience into the daily grind, something they (certainly not a suburbanite reclining on a chaise longue with a tumbler of bourbon and a book) may not be wholly familiar with and that indeed might make most readers shy away.

But I think Vollmann is doing something more audacious. He’s unafraid to comment directly to the reader about the character traits he finds important, or the very human observations of supremely troubled people, moments as valid as the hard details that Balzac remains celebrated for, but that contemporary literature often turns its back on. The interesting thing is that this results in his books resembling some confluence of hard reportage and Vollmann’s fervent imagination.

Consider this passage which describes Sapphire in Section 378 of The Royal Family:

I do not propose to ‘explain’ her, because I do not understand her. But I love her more than any of the other characters in the book, except perhaps for Domino, and I refuse to refrain from praising her. Should astronomers and ethicists ever succeed in proving that God resembles her, then lost and weary Cain won’t need to flee anymore.

And there is this similar address in an early moment in a radiology clinic in The Rainbow Stories:

The man after him was very calm, and did not wince when the needle went in. But he looked away. I think it is very funny that if you shoot yourself up four or five times a day you do not mind the needle going in, but you cannot bear to watch someone else do it.

Vollmann then remains a curious narrator, one willing to reveal his own limitations while simultaneously looking hard into the face of the truth (whether metaphorical or strictly observational) he sees and the truth that is often ignored on a daily basis right in front of us.

This is not exactly postmodernism and is it not quite journalism. It certainly offers us an important glimpse inside Vollmann’s consciousness. But I would suggest that, in openly confessing his amusement by something as horrifying as a junkie finding fear in a needle (away from his alley, away from a rotting apartment), or in pointing out that not even he (a no-holds-barred observer) can fully understand his subjects, Vollmann is more of a reassuring narrator than an opportunist or an outright mocker. His goal here is to humanize, but in selecting a tableau of lowlifes, he’s daring us to look beyond the easy labels of good and evil that antidrug campaigns, do-gooder reformers, and hazy two-hour sashays by self-proclaimed pundits often mistaken for qualified expertise.

It’s worth observing that The Rainbow Stories includes a revised color spectrum near its beginnings. And while colors themselves are used as starting points for this collection of sordid tales, the salient point here is that, if there is an idealistic goal somewhere over the rainbow, the human spectrum needs to be broadened beyond an easily recognizable selection of hues.

by DrMabuse

A Meme That Involves Ears

1. The person (or persons) who passed the baton to you.

The trusty Tito Perez — whom I wish I had run into while at Coachella.

2. Total volume of music files on your computer.

Somewhere in the area of 40 Gigs, although it could be quite more than that. I have a horrible tendency to put everything in one place, which includes music I buy, music I — *ahem* — try out, and music that slips into my hands at gunpoint.

3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.

This Perfect Day, C-60. As some regular readers know, I’m madly addicted to Swedish rock. (The Shout Out Louds, for example, was one of Coachella’s highlights. And I sung along to almost every song!) For whatever reason, Swedish rock contains a sense of purity that really needs to be explored and understood more. And in the Shout Out Louds’ case, I can’t think of anyone else willing to use xylophone so unapologetically in a live set. My guess is that it has something to do with Systembolaget, which I’ve yet to try. But I’d hazard a guess that drinking the stuff would probably make me pick up my guitar again and write cheery goofball songs.

4. Song playing at the moment of writing.

Doves, “Ambition” (a supremely sad song from a very good album, Some Cities)

5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)

I’ll stick with the songs in my head at the moment:

M.I.A., “Bucky Down Gun” (Really, how can anyone resist this track? Old school hip-hop mixed with crazed banshee-like rapping, a clarion call that is deliberately artificial and lyrics that demand a call to revolution, which seems particularly apposite in our current political clime.)

Nine Inch Nails, “You Know What You Are?” (Look, I’ll confess that With Teeth is a spotty album and that even a cursory examination of this song’s lyrics shows that Reznor makes little sense. But I still contend that Trent Reznor shrieks “fuck” perhaps better than most. And somehow, I’ve really come to appreciate that crazy-as-fuck percussion.)

Of Montreal, “Oslo in the Summertime” (Thank you, Kevin Barnes, for yet another addictive album, The Sunlandic Twins, that sneaks up on you after several weeks of listening. What’s particularly striking about this track is the semi-electro tone mixed with the languorous Ray Davies feel to the lyrics. The first time I heard this song, I was mildly annoyed by the buzzy timbre. The third time, I had a goofy grin on my face. And now the song just won’t go away.)

Doves, “Almost Forgot Myself” (I don’t think I’ll ever hear a track this year as uncoditionally directional as this one is this year. This may be the best use of a percussive clang in a pop song since the Beatles’ “Everyone’s Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey.” Plus, it sums up what’s so fantastic about the Doves: a moribund tune in a minor key driven by a defiant snare and a guitar fuzz that involves carrying on in the face of existential chaos.)

Royksopp, “Eple” (What is it about Nordic pop exactly? I’ve been relistening to Melody A.M. for the first time in about two years, and hoping that these folks might get me crazy about electronica again. This track, in particular, which offers a goofy downbeat drive just this short of mellow without coming across as yet another pretentious ambient nightmare designed for the New Age, Air-listening crowd.)

6. The five people to whom you will ‘pass the musical baton’

Maud Newton, who I hope will remind me about the importance of guitars
The Old Hag, because I’m damn curious about what she’s listening to these days
Mark Sarvas, because I know there’s more than meets the eye to his audio palette than certain CM-lead bands that get too much airplay
Speedy Snail, because he’s been considerably silent on the musical question (and I blame his insane devotion to Neal Stephenson)
Scott Esposito, because he’s younger than me and probably has a better set of ears than I do

by DrMabuse

Clarifying the Panties Issue

If you’re coming here from James Callan’s Telegraph article (not yet available online), welcome. I’m not certain how accurate he was about calling this place “an addictive mix of urbane musings and taut riffs against the pack mentality of the traditional book-reviewing press,” but I’m honored nonetheless.

Callan is absolutely right about the panties, however. Callan got the info out of me only because he was an affable gent who asked a lot of interesting questions. I never announced the panties here, because I feared that this would invite more packages of panties to the P.O. Box. (Frankly, I’m more interested in panties that are worn on ladies and, if the mood is right, slid down sinuous legs, ideally with a soul attached. All this is the aftermath of a remarkably repressed upbringing, in which the very mention of sex was enough to cause melodramatic pronouncements of surprise, if not flames to spontaneously burn onyx sppors through my bedroom. The many Victorian novels I read growing up certainly didn’t help things.) But perhaps one day, I’ll offer a rundown of the odder packages I’ve received over the past year.

by DrMabuse

Nightmares & Solutions

If you thought that Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident, brother, have I got a serious wakeup call for you.

Read this. Then come back here.

The people in charge are letting inhuman monsters perform acts that fly in the face of decency. Ask yourself if you would treat your worst enemy this way. And ask again if you would let such a corrupt gang of goons eke out such vile and despicable acts on other humans. But the key part of the article, the thing that goes far and beyond simple hatred for the enemy is this paragraph:

It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

This is not a matter of being red state or blue state. This is not a matter of being liberal or conservative. This is a matter of being American and standing up for what’s right. And that sure as hell doesn’t involve denying a manacled man water or humiliating a man far beyond the call of mere Saddam underwear pictures or letting a man die because he was a cab driver who happened to be wandering around in the wrong area.

I got the link from this Metafilter thread. It was suggested by the posters that this article and that this information be distributed to churches. Churches, as most people know, are the congregation points for many who live in the heartland. They are instrumental in disseminating information to ordinary people and promoting decency. And I think that anyone reading that article would be hard-pressed to argue that what we have here is something that speaks beyond the realm of what is decent and germane.

Inspired by the thread, this afternoon, I sent a group fax of the article to ten churches in Alabama, thinking that a state that had a history of bombing a church and killing four little girls back in 1963 because of the color of their skin might be more receptive to the current plight, which involves torturing and letting people die because of the color of their skin.

But within this idea lies the potential to take back this country. I urge anyone reading this blog to send a copy of this article by fax or by mail (keep in mind that hard copies offer a physical quality which cannot be easily deleted and that not everyone in this nation is hooked to the Net) to churches of varying stripes and distinctions.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of churches in this country. Even if we were to reach just one, we would plant a seed demanding greater accountability for our government’s actions.