Book 30 - Jonathan Lethem "As She Climbed Across the Table: A Novel"

Jonathan Lethem "As She Climbed Across the Table: A Novel" (Vintage)






This is the first book by Lethem that I read. I enjoyed the pseudo-physics and the non-stop academic cynicism and cynical academics. Philip, the main character of the book, is very well constructed. You understand him. You hear his thoughts, you listen to his conversations, and you know how he is feeling at any given moment. The world is filtered through Philip. Philip interprets the world. So at the end of the book, when Braxia explains his theory about Lack, and even later when Philip and Lack are one, we can look back and re-read the world Philip has already defined for us, constructed with his ample chatter, his intellectual observations, and his obsessive search for Alice - aptly named for another Alice, lost in a rabbit's hole, an endless pit, Lack - and we can fully appreciate how we construct reality. (Funny, this makes even more sense after reading about the correspondence and difference between one's own reality and the shared common reality and how humans come to learn the difference in Kathryn Schultz's Being Wrong. Lack, the error, defines and constructs a world, or many worlds. Now I am beginning to make nonsense sense.)

But something is missing here. Perhaps I wanted more to know about how and why Alice fell in love with the void. I felt like Lethem or Philip tried to explain this to me many times, but failed. Or I was not convinced by any of their banter? I am not sure.

All in all, it was an enjoyable read. Philip sounds a lot like what I sound like in my head, so I had no trouble following him through winding chains of thought. But those who do not like wordy, witty, and sometimes tiring chatter might find Philip a bit too much.

Book 31 - Carys Davies "West"

Carys Davies "West" (Granta Books)






A decade or so after the Lewis and Clark expedition, Pennsylvania widower Cy Bellman is captivated by their description of one of their discoveries ‘…monstrous bones…sunk in the salty Kentucky mud’. He becomes obsessed with the idea that the huge creatures that left these bones might still be found somewhere out in the far West and is determined to find them. Despite all the predictions from neighbours and family that he is embarking on a fool’s errand that will surely end in his death, he can only say ‘I have to go. I have to go and see. That’s all I can tell you. I have to’. He leaves his ten-year-old daughter, Bess, in the care of his sister and sets out on a journey that will take him across thousands of miles. Along the way, he hires a guide, a young Shawnee boy and the pair develop a very complex relationship, one that transcends their lack of common language.

When I saw West, the debut novel, by the author in paperback in Waterstones one day , I will admit it was the cover more than the description that caught my eye. I will also admit I doubted the story would match the promise of that art but oh, that cover! So did the novel match the promise? In a word, yes. West is a beautifully written often lyrical and completely engrossing story. It is quite short, more novella than novel but it carries quite a punch. It alternates between Bellman’s story and Bess’, a lonely girl who must fend off dangers of her own after her father’s departure. But it is the relationship between Bellman and the Shawnee boy – sort of Don Quixote set in the early 19th century. American West - that kept me glued to the pages.
Highly recommended.

Book 32 - David Zane Mairowitz "Introducing Kafka"

David Zane Mairowitz "Introducing Kafka" (Icon Books)





David Zane Mairowitz thinks Kafka's writing has insufficient Jewish content, so too much of the text here talks about the Jewish situation in Prague in Kafka's time and adduces a lot of highly questionable and possibly discriminatory ideas about Jewish psychology (really? all of them with the same psychology?) such as self-loathing. Although the cover extracts Kafka's comment, "What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself," and it appears in the text too, he is undaunted, and his regret that the only person Kafka seems to have truly loved was not Jewish is palpable. His excoriation of the city of Prague, which he has established meant little if anything to Kafka, for cashing in on its native son makes for a pretty flat ending.

However, this is a comic book, not read for the text but for Robert Crumb's drawings, which have long interested me. He is a master of the horror-comic style, which here is aptly used to illustrate Kafka's stories (and perhaps depictions of his father), but also does attractive portraits of sympathetic characters and classic comic-book two-page spreads, especially of cityscapes, real or imaginary. When the text describes a character as a strapping young woman, we know the artist is home-free: those familiar with his work will know that strapping young women is a special feature of his work.

The best parts are the retelling of Kafka's stories, which include various bits of information, painlessly delivered, about the circumstances of their creation and some bibliographic details. Max Brod seems somewhat slighted, though I have to say Kafka's original title for his last work, "The Man Who Disappeared," is a better title than Brod's "America." Because of the detailed drawings with many telling and funny details, this little book takes longer to read than you'd think -- but with the stories embedded in it, it's best, and most fun, to take it in slowly.

Chnason To Torch

I have been reading an article in The Wire magazine this morning. Specifically , the June 1993 issue online version. Alas, I do not have the physical edition anymore. The like between chanson and torch singers was Edith Piaf. Her life was tragic and it showed in her moving songs whether you understand French or not. The sorely-buffeted and tragic lives lived - it seems - by so many torch-singers have helped:for anyone forced by circumstance to live a secret, repressed or even vicarious existence, the torch singer becomes an ideal focus for identification. They embody love's capacity for sadness (surely the reason the torch singer has historically found her most enthusiastic and loyal audience in gay culture). In this respect, both Barbara Sreisand and Shirley Bassey cones to mind.

At her best, Judy Garland was a supreme torch singer: listen no further than the soundtrack of A Star ls Born for a definitive version of "The Man That Got Away", as evocative a cry of sexual longing and the despair of desertion as there is. That's all", she told Dirk Bogarde (Snakes And Ladders, Chatto and Windus, 1978).With simple clarity, she probably summed up the secret weapon of torch. Indeed, the cult of Garland the diva centred at first not on the luminous film performances, nor the glowing legacy of her recordings,nor even on her Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz(where most of us encounter her for the first time). It is a more macabre and distanced phenomenon,one which has only grown up since her death. Infact, by the time the Garland legend began to form, long after the cinematic triumphs and euphoric concerts, her voice was less than a shadow of its former self. Her ghoulish public weren't turning out to hear a golden echo of the past, but to see if each wavering vibrato would be her last.

Infact, "My Man" started life in 1920 as "Mon Homme",in the repertoire of the great French music hall star, Mistinguett (today it is probably better remembered as sung by Barbara Streisand in Funny Girl, the biopic of Brice's life).The link between the torch song and the chansan realiste has remained strong down the years (stuck for away of describing Edith Piaf to an English-speaking audience unfamiliar with her emotional technique and style, her recording company would often call her a 'torch singer' in sleeve notes.)

Through the 1940s and 1950s the old Broadway standards were revived and reworked by some of the great vocal stylists of the century - Peggy Lee, Holiday, Garland, Lena Horne,Julie London, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan. Inevitably, the sophisticated jazz- and blues-inspired techniques of some of these artistes carried the material a long way from its raw, vulgar, intimate roots and it developed in a variety of sophisticated, not to say self-conscious, directions. Now at the very heart of the Retro Boom in the nineties, their recordings were being repackaged for a new generation, and singers like Lee and Holiday are giving torch material 'respectability',even though actual torch songs formed a very small part of their repertoires.

The torch song was revived in the sixties, but this was anticipated in revealing ways by the all-too brief ascendency of Patsy Cline. Country & Western is also fixated on unrequited love, the errant lovers seperation,and Cline's own tragic life and early death (in 1963) have boosted her re-incarnation as a pop diva (with a dissident cult following this time strongly lesbian).The chain here, which includes Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton, concludes with Kd. Lang, whose voice has the Cline vibrancy. Already an icon of sorts, Lang eludes easy categorisation, but 'torch' is a word some criiics have already reached for.

Also, Dusty Springfield, a great pop diva and a great white soul voice (with a gay male and lesbian following),linked up with the Pet Shop Boys and produced some great tracks, introduced her to new
fans as well.

While much of Annie Lennox's work deals with the difficult relationship which the icon must conduct with her following, the age-old torch themes of isolation and personal loss are always present. And even she couldn't resist a retro touch with her authentic, throw-away version of "Keep
Young And Beautiful".

The true torch singer is defined by a capacity to touch us, regardless of sexuality or age, and that camp is a disguise for deep, shared, ordinary emotions, the kind we all experience, but may be too sophisticated to admit. As soon as we ignore such facts, or undervalue the music that lives by them, we begin to miss something of enormous importance.Something even Whitney Houston would have known.

So, in essence, that is a long diversion to mention that I was listening to a CD called L'immirtelle by Edith Piaf, collection of twenty four songs.