Neil Young: Heart of Gold

This was really, really good, though I think you probably need to be at least a bit of a fan to fully appreciate it. It's a concert film, documenting the premiere of "Prairie Wind" (David thought that it might have been filmed over two nights) - a show built around songs from that recent album - at the famous Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. Leads in with short grabs from Young and each of his band members (including the ageless Emmylou Harris) which set the scene and build a sense of anticipation for the concert to follow, and then gets into the music - the first two-thirds or so taken exclusively from the Prairie Wind record, I think, followed by a curtain fall and then some older material and (I think) ending with one or maybe two again from the album which gives the show its name (and which I haven't listened to).

From the first song, Young and his band (nearly all around Young's age - ie, not young at all (ahem) - and all either utterly into it or so utterly blase as to've almost come out the other side) - hold the audience in the palm of their collective hand, and the long run of unfamiliar (to me) cuts all come through clearly, each with its own distinct character and nearly all memorable. It's tilted towards the country end of Young's oeuvre, lap steel prominent and harmonica frequently in evidence, and tends slightly towards the grand - choruses in particular tending to be punctuated by harmony vocals, crunching drums and sometimes even horns. But of course, it was the ones that I actually knew, all in a row at the end, which most came alive for me - "Old Man", "Heart of Gold", "The Needle and the Damage Done" and "Comes a Time"...

Young himself comes across as very humble and unassuming, speaking simply but movingly of his then-recently deceased father and his college-aged daughter, getting a round of applause after declaring that although Nashville might have changed since the days of Hank Williams, the spirit is still there, and later delivering some heartfelt musings on the guitar he's playing at the time, which belonged to Hank back in the day. That oft-remarked contrast between his bearish physique and the tenderness with which he so often sings is in full evidence - the falsetto gets a bit of a workout - and he's really in fine voice, with the backing band as tight as you could ask for. Rumours have been going around for a while that he may be coming down to Australia later this year, possibly unplugged - bring it on.

The film's directed by Jonathan Demme of Silence of the Lambs and, more relevantly, Stop Making Sense fame (and no doubt others), and has something of a resemblance to that latter in terms of what I can only describe as a certain flatness of style as well as a particular manner of handling light and shadows. Crowd shots kept to an absolute minimum and there's relatively little cutting - most of it's in the 'crowd's eye' view, with plenty of close-ups, giving the production a sense of immediacy and intimacy. I was in a pretty good mood anyway and Heart of Gold left me soul-warmed and satisfied.

"An Evening of Music presented by the Bearbrass Ensemble" @ Collins Street Baptist Church, Thursday 25 May

These are the reasons I went to this, the first two probably being marginally more decisive than the third:
1. The program included pieces by Pärt and Philip Glass.
2. The (chamber string) ensemble included a number of people I knew, most notably Jarrod.
3. It was a benefit for Urban Seed and so in a good cause to which I've had some passing exposure in the past.

This was the program:

Vivaldi - "String concerto Al Santo Sepolcro"
Vivaldi - "String concerto in G Minor RV 156"
Pärt - "Siouan's Song ("My soul yearns after the Lord")"
Glass - "String quartet No 2 (Company)"

[Interval]

Natalie Williams - Two movements from "Particle Tracks"
Richard Meale - "Cantilena Pacifica"
Sibelius - "Andante Festivo"

I wasn't previously familiar with any of the pieces, and enjoyed it all very much. All fairly contemplative, but far from oppressively so - and, as far as I could discern, well done by the players. The Glass and the Sibelius were my favourites (the spaces and silences in the Pärt got somewhat lost in the venue), each glimmering with all the stuff that I like about their respective composers. I'm pretty sure that I haven't heard any of their works done live before, so that was nice; to highlight the theme of 'urban space', the Glass piece was accompanied by photos of familiar Melbourne spaces projected on to the walls (suitable and also faintly uncanny given how frequently Glass's music is used as soundtrack score material). Good to be reminded why I like Philip Glass so much, too!

As to the venue, though - the old Baptist church on Collins Street - it generally worked really well acoustically...quite small so that the sound carried well and retained its immediacy and warmth, but somehow without the echoing and boucing off walls and ceiling that I would've expected (both Jarrod and the ensemble's leader, one Bruce Campbell - who, it turns out, I'm pretty sure I've met before at some party or other - commented separately during the interval that they were pleased with the acoustics)...what with the occasional creaking of the pews, I felt that it was an experience somewhat akin to listening to music on vinyl. Was there with Wei and Penny, and also Leana, but a whole host of others were also around (including many from MS [as the Firm will henceforth be known in these chronicles]), as always with these things...the music and the everything of it made me happy.

Françoiz Breut - Vingt à trente mille jours

At first, this record (along with Une saison volée - I haven't yet listened to the first one) rather paled by comparison to the live Françoiz experience with which I was basically introduced to her sombre, nocturnal take on French pop. A few weeks on, though, its distinct charms have very much made themselves felt; all of the words I used to describe the concert are applicable to the record, but it's as if the music has been lightly drizzled in a further rain of gauzey melancholy and yearning and a kind of hazy distance...I can't put it better than that. Thinking of individual songs helps in illustrating that analogy/impression: "Le verre pilé", say, was an absolute show-stopper at the Corner, that lonely repeated drum fill seeming to portend something inexpressible and (for me, at least) summoning images of people standing solitary in the fog at water's edge, late autumn, night-time, with Breut's voice fluttering untethered around it; on record, the song has a more muffled, sinuous swirl to it and, well, it's different...anyway, that one, along with "Si tu disais" (a big call, this - but I think this one's as lushly romantic as pop music gets) and "L'affaire d'un jour" (a lovely dark-eyed brood), is my favourite on the album. Oh, but I've taken it all to heart...

By the way, darn if Vingt à trente mille jours doesn't have one of the most attractive covers (and general sleeve designs) that I've ever seen...

Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun (volume 1: "Shadow and Claw" and volume 2: "Sword and Citadel")

One night a little while back, I was in the mood for something easy to read and in an escapist vein, so I left work reasonably early and hit the city library for a browse; eventually, I settled on the first of these omnibus volumes (each contains two novels which were originally published separately - the first, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator, and the second, The Sword of the Lictor and The Citadel of the Autarch), mainly because of the glowing endorsements on the back from Kim Stanley Robinson (who I haven't read) and Ursula Le Guin and George R R Martin (both of whom I have read and reckon are ace) and the blurb-y bit stating that it was "[r]ecently voted the greatest fantasy of all time, after The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit".

And, indeed, it's good - twisting and sinister but never gratuitously so, written in a strikingly ornate and formal, and at times windily philosophical, style, and consistently gripping...pulling, as the adage goes, like a steam train while sketching in the internal landscape of the ambiguous hero, Severian the journeyman torturer, and the external world of Urth [and settings will seem strangely familiar], an echoed reverberation of our own society thousands if not millions of years in the future, in which high technology and interstellar contact mingle with neo-feudalism and medieval exigencies of survival and faith. There's a lot going on, too - apart from the philosophical musings about reality and truth, there is a graceful wreathing of unreliable narration and 'rememories' and other well-handled filigree, and again always well-integrated with the wider concerns of the story and series as a whole. It's strikingly literary without losing any of the power of the best epic fantasy to transport the reader to someplace else; I'd put it below Stephen Donaldson but would probably consider it to be pretty much as good as anything else out there in the field.

I Know I'm Not Alone

A fundraising screening for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, this sold out one of the Nova's large theatres, which has to be a good sign. I Know I'm Not Alone is a documentary, shot on hand-held camera and documenting Michael Franti's travels to Iraq and Palestine in an attempt to both reach out and to discover and present the effect of war and occupation on the ground, scored by Franti's music and put together quite roughly (although not affectedly so).

One of the film's strengths is the relatively low-key and non-polemical approach it takes; while Franti obviously has a point of view and the documentary's message isn't exactly veiled (it's both implicitly and explicitly dedicated to "the peacemakers"), it's pitched at a level of generality and presented in such a way - focusing on his interactions with the people he meets, be they soldiers, musicians, cab drivers or just plain folks - that it doesn't come across as at all strident, propagandist, or any of that bad stuff. (Moreover, I thought that it struck a good balance between Franti's celebrity and his desire to present a street level, relatively unmediated view of the societies and people he visits, mostly by acknowledging and even emphasising the centrality of music to his life and travels - and, thankfully, didn't push the authenticity [ie, "this is what it's really like over there"] line overtly at all.) Probably, though, that approach also undermines it to some extent by diminishing its impact.

At some point in Baghdad, Franti mentions that while he didn't have the time to write a whole song in Arabic, he thought he might still be able to break down some barriers by writing a song with just one Arab word - choosing "habibi", which apparently means something along the lines of "dear one" - and we then see him walking through the streets, playing the song as children sing along; later, it proves to be a hit in occupied Palestinian territory, too...for me, that whole thing encapsulates the documentary as a whole - eminently well-meaning and with its heart entirely in the right place, but somehow a bit too "be a world child form a circle" and just a bit wet.[*]

That said, though, my overall response was overwhelmingly positive; the world needs more films like this one.

* * *

[*] This last phrase being Wei's, who was there with Gary though I didn't see them on the night. I actually went with some of the others from the human rights law group at work - Leana, Vanessa, Eugenia, Rachel and one James McCa-- - with Swee Leng also along; I'd had dinner with the first three of those beforehand, whereat we'd quickly gone through a couple of bottles of the house red, possibly (in retrospect) resulting in our reception of the film being somewhat coloured, I suppose...

Clive Hamilton - "What's Left? The Death of Social Democracy" (Quarterly Essay issue 21)

Hamilton's argument here is simple but, if made out, far-reaching in its implications. In essence, his claim is that the old social democratic ideology to which progressive political parties in the West - including the ALP - have traditionally been committed is, in societies such as Australia where affluence rather than material deprivation is the norm, no longer a meaningful or viable platform for social change or political relevance, and he makes the case for that central proposition lucidly and elegantly, tying it up with a closely related argument as to the contemporary irrelevance and obsolescence of the ALP; suggesting that "the defining problem of modern industrial society is not injustice but alienation, and that the central task of progressive politics today is to achieve not equality, but liberation", he argues that the old left paradigm needs to be replaced with a 'politics of wellbeing' focused on a cluster of values including fulfilling work, strong communities, and a turn away from the market and commodity culture, rather than on economic growth.

I found Hamilton's argument basically convincing, but there are at least a couple of dubious moves in it. Here's one:

the concerns that motivated social democracy - poverty, inequality and exploitation - are, as a result of affluence, now confined to a small proportion of the population, no more than 20 per cent. While the moral imperative to improve the circumstances of this group remains - indeed, in the face of widespread affluence, it has even greater force - the circumstances of 20 per cent of the population cannot provide the basis for a politics of social transformation in the twenty-first century.

My concern with that passage - which obviously represents a key step in his overall argument - is the assumption that the impoverished circumstances of a full 20 per cent of the population (that's one in five, kids - a small matter of some four million people across Australia) doesn't represent a viable wedge for contemporary progressive politics. Presumably he puts this up as a pragmatic 'recognition' of people's essential self-interestedness - he's careful (and quite right) to note that our collective moral responsibility is undiminished by the economic sea change - but I'm just not sure it's as clear-cut as Hamilton suggests, even on the terms that he seems to be proposing...there seem to be some pretty large assumptions at work there.

And here's another problematic one:

Yet this attribution of economic injustice and minority oppression to the structure of capitalism proved to be wrong. While the battles have been fierce and problems remain, this way of characterising capitalism in rich countries like Australia is no longer defensible. If this is true, the principal problem of capitalism is no longer injustice.

Now, assuming that Hamilton's claim about the prevailing level of affluence in countries like Australia is justified - he spends a bit of time defending the claim and it's probably reasonable to go with it - that passage looks to be, on its face, fair enough. But the problem with it is the assumption that Australia can be considered in isolation from the global (capitalist) system - which, of course, it can't be, for it seems not only logically possible but positively likely that the affluence of nations such as Australia has come about through the operation of the capitalist system to the detriment of other, less powerful and industrialised nations, thus perpetuating the old injustices and imbalances except on a larger, more general scale...meaning that Hamilton's prescription, even if made out on its own terms, can succeed only by turning a blind eye to the larger picture of systematic exploitation (thus opening itself to many of the same criticisms as those which he levels at the so-called 'Third Way' of Tony Blair and co). Maybe that's the only pragmatic thing to do, and perhaps a genuine national focus on some kind of "politics of wellbeing" would be a step forward and a step towards addressing those larger issues to do with capitalism on an international level - but even if so, this, to me, seems to call for serious thought.

I also had some problems with the focus on "liberation" rather than "equality" but I'm kind of running out of steam here, plus it was more than a week ago now that I finished reading the essay, so may leave that one for now...

More generally, it's interesting to see the ways in which Hamilton remains beholden to the traditional framework and language of the left - his comment that "[t]he Australian Labor Party has served its historical purpose and will wither and die as the progressive force of Australian politics" inevitably brings to mind Marx's insistence on the historical inevitability of the downfall of capitalism (although Hamilton does - rather unsatisfactorily, I think - sort of attempt to address this one in passing), while his focus on liberation cannot but recall Marx's diagnoses of alienation and commodity fetishism, not to mention the old rouser "[t]he proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains".

Hm. So I enjoyed reading this and, all in all, thought it was very good - it's well written and pleasingly presented, and, as I said, it's largely convincing and provides much food for thought. Nice!

Spoon - Girls Can Tell

Only a few songs into this one, I found myself thinking very similar thoughts to those which struck me when I was first hearing the band's latest, Gimme Fiction - basically, thoughts about how great Spoon are. I don't know what it is - again, there's just something about them which makes their music a simple joy. I've just realised that one of the funnest incidents of the stripped-back approach they take is spotting the flashes and echoes of their (often quite dissimilar) antecedents in the rock family tree - and so it is that at one moment, with the guitar riff that steps in "The Fitted Shirt", they recall Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir", and then, two songs later, the guitar parts are coming across all Smiths on the jangle and circle of "Take A Walk", and so on. Mebbe these guys are just making the quintessential bedsit rock n roll for the kids of today - whatever it is, Girls Can Tell is utterly ace.

Siri Hustvedt - A Plea For Eros

Names can be misleading, especially if - like me - your grasp of their provenance is, ahem, on the loose side. Still, having just finished reading this collection of essays written by her, I think that Siri Hustvedt would likely be amused and interested by my misapprehension, based on her name, that she was of Indian background (a belief which obviously owed rather more to the 'Siri' than the 'Hustvedt')...

One could probably get some way towards understanding why I enjoyed these essays by considering a list of Hustvedt's preoccupations, which include but are not limited to:
- liminality and interstitiality (forgive the jargon - sometimes it really is the best way to express something);
- imagination and reality (and the relationship between them, natch);
- memory and the present moment (ie, and/in);
- language and Everything (see immediately above);
- images and the self (and psychoanalytic such-and-suchness);
- people and the spaces between them (see all of the above);
- et cetera (not to mention her ability to write about The Great Gatsby with genuine insight and feeling).

I sometimes felt as if I was reading a less precious ("less precious" = better, in this context) Jeanette Winterson, which made me feel a bit ambivalent in light of my current perspective on, and past infatuations, with (the writing of) said JW, but I suppose it comes with the terrain of writing in this kind of abstract, philosophical, 'postmodern', overtly personally-informed vein.

Skipped the ones on The Bostonians and Our Mutual Friend, not having read either (even though I knew that Hustvedt would cover much more than merely the texts of those novels in her excursions around them), but very much enjoyed the piece on Gatsby (not least for the light it sheds on the curious way in which the novel is framed by its opening - the narrator's memory of his father's words, "Whenever you feel like criticising anyone, remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had"); those are the only explicitly literature-focused ones, and elsewhere Hustvedt, amongst other things: provides a potted family and personal history (in "Yonder" which, like the word which gives the essays its the title, enacts a continual slippage from one point - or scene - to another, over and over); uses her experiences wearing a corset as a film extra as a jumping-off point for a meditation on clothing, identity and imagination; and makes the case for what she calls 'eros', the mystery and uncertainty which always abides at the heart of love and sexual attraction.

So I didn't find these essays particular remarkable or wonderful or amazing, but they're good and I feel a better person (again with the self-improvement!) for having read them. Next up (so far as Hustvedt goes): What I Loved.

The Fire Show - The Fire Show

Edgy, jagged, ambitious and frequently grandiose indie-rock - puts me a wee bit in mind of the Arcade Fire, though both more punk and more prog (please note, dear reader, that neither of these are generally good things in my books), and with more of a penchant for electronic samples and scratchy riffage than baroque chamber arrangements, and without the unerring dirge momentum either within individual songs or across the record as a whole. Actually predates Funeral by several years, though - I heard and got into "The Antipathetic" back in the audiogalaxy days (I always refer to that time, and I still have many of the mp3s on my old laptop as obvious references, but my sense of how they actually fit in with the rest of my personal chronology, even to the extent of knowing what years they spanned, is extremely shaky) and its restless, fiery urgency has left me wanting to hear more ever since. Provisional verdict, having had it for some weeks but during a period in which I've been still very much swinging away from the guitar rock, is that it's pretty good if maybe a bit bratty for my taste.

Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

I wonder whether Chabon was tempted to entitle this 'The Escapist' - to a certain cast of mind, its punchiness and the double-meaning it embodies would surely have appealed. In any event, if the thought did cross his mind, he chose well in going with the novel's actual title, which more effectively gets across the duality (or even trebling, depending on how you read the text) which is at work within it, concerning the relationship between life and art, by means of the comic book.

So far as my reasons for reading Kavalier & Clay go, it wasn't the most auspicious beginning. I met a guy at some party - Ben T, a friend of Nenad's - who was at the centre of a book club (these things are springing up like mushrooms after the rain) and invited me along. The club's first text for discussion had been The Catcher in the Rye and the one immediately coming up at the time was a Bukowski, which, taken together, seemed to me to establish a rather worrying trend (all a bit determinedly counter-cultural for me, and besides I was only lukewarm on Catcher - despite having read it in high school, which ought to've been the perfect time for the book - and detested the Bukowski that I read a while back); but, a few weeks on, they got the word through to me that the next book would be Kavalier & Clay, and since I'd been vaguely intending to read it anyway and besides book clubs are fun with a capital 'f', I picked up a copy...then, as these things go, I got distracted and didn't start it until a couple of days before the meeting, which I promptly missed.

Turns out that the delay was my loss, though. Kavalier & Clay is one of those immensely easy-to-read, page-turning novels that makes you feel the whole way through - it's littered with these little peaks of sadness, and the cumulative effect is, well, effective...despite the frequent breeziness of its tone, I always felt that the book earned its emotional payoffs. Somehow, it happens without any particular signposting on Chabon's part but nor does it ever feel peremptory or abrupt - it's almost as if the moment of affect or sadness is experienced only as it is passing, and never as a particular static moment of presence (a rather metaphysical way of trying to express it, but that's the best I can do after a day at work followed by stand-up cocktail party). The more you think about it afterwards, the more it hits you. Anyway, however it's done, it works really well.

Cracking yarn as well. Picks up two major characters - the titular Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay - and puts them through their paces, drawing in a colourful and sympathetically-observed gallery of others, unfolding satisfyingly and often in unexpected directions. Doesn't shy away from a large canvas, and happy to play with history and narrative in a generally unobtrusive but effective fashion. And did I mention that it's funny, too?

PS: Literature (well, art in general) can make you a better person. Lately, I've been feeling - for the first time - that I've really felt and taken some small steps towards grasping the horror and the sadness and, probably even more so, the sheer scale of the waste, of war (with the usual caveat re: the extent to which this is possible for someone who's never had any actual experience of war itself)...I mean, of course I've always known this, but it's only quite recently that that 'knowledge' has really been moored in something - even this kind of imaginative, as opposed to first-hand or 'real life', terrain - and I think that this rather belated flowering, if you can call it that, is mostly due to some of the stuff I've been exposed to lately, this novel and perhaps Everything Is Illuminated, and others that I can't call to mind right now, and maybe even The White Hotel operating in the background...

The Concretes - In Colour

It's true, I was all excited about this one. I'd heard "On The Radio" and "Chosen One", and both are sugar-rush delights, Victoria Bergsman's engaging rasp trilling over a luscious weave of modern retro-inspired pop sounds. But, taken over the length of a whole album, In Colour doesn't quite stand up - its joys lie in the details and the overall aesthetic, but too often the melodies aren't there. The two I've already mentioned are wonderful, "Change In The Weather" has something of the same simple thrill to its chorus, "Fiction" pretty much gets the extended buildup thing right, and closer "Song For The Songs" hits the spot, too, but everything else kinda blurs.

I'm also not sure how well the band is served by the somewhat smoother production job which has been done on this record when compared to their debut, self-titled lp. I think that it tends to flatten out some of their best and most distinctive traits - the clanging Velvet Underground guitars and the blare of Bergsman's vocals in particular, and the contrast that those elements set up with the pop sweetness of the melodies, and so there's nothing like, say, the measuredly cacophonous swing of "Say Something New", the two-minute blast of "You Can't Hurry Love" or the desperate swoon of "Lonely As Can Be" on this new record.

When all's said and done, it's still a new Concretes album and it's still just fine (also, the packaging is impeccable, which never hurts...and yes, it's still an article of faith on my part that Scandinavian pop music makes the world a better place!) - it's just that, when compared to its predecessor, In Colour is a bit of a disappointment.

The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers edited by Vendela Vida

Exactly what its title suggests, a collection of writers talking to other writers. Each conversation is one on one, with one writer having selected the other as their partner/subject, meaning that it's generally an up-and-comer (if you consider the likes of Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith and Jonathan Lethem to be up-and-comers) interviewing a more established writer who they particularly admire (and, in many cases, seemingly have been strongly influenced by); it being writers talking to writers, the topic of conversation is, more often than not, writing, and often - and these are the ones that I enjoyed the most - at quite a general level, asking Big Questions along the lines of "what is the role of the writer in society today?", "how should we write?", and so on.

I've been carrying this book around for months now (I've been stalled halfway through the last one, with Tobias Wolff - that name brings back the memories! - for weeks, having been distracted by other things), and the details of most of the conversations aren't fresh in my mind any more, but naturally I was drawn to the pieces involving writers with whose work I'm familiar to greater or lesser extents - those involving Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami and Tom Stoppard in particular. Ben Ehrenreich's conversation with John Banville is a bit of a highlight; and Zadie's engaging ramblings in company with Ian McEwan are also well worth the reading. Apart from those, the one which left the largest impression is Thisbe Nissen's talk with Siri Hustvedt, in which everything that the latter said made me think that I couldn't possibly not like her novels (none of which I've read before).

Anyway, as I said, the details have largely fled my conscious memory by now, but I'm sure that the insights and inspirations with which these conversations are liberally scattered have lodged somewhere in my mind, where they'll operate to my benefit and edification. It really is fascinating to read what these brilliant writers have to say about their craft, and how they arrived at and continued to approach their current points as writers, and not a little reassuring into the bargain.

* * *

My own writing continues, slowly. I think that the best way to write a novel would probably be to forge ahead as quickly as possible, just putting the words on the page at the time and only later returning to hone and craft them to whatever contingent perfection might be possible, but I don't seem capable of that wilful initial neglect - instead, I find myself painstakingly working and reworking individual paragraphs, sentences, phrases, as I go. (In particular, the attempt to stick as closely as possible to a phenomenological account is giving me serious grief.)

I've been thinking about the novels which have been, whether or not I've been aware of it, serving as touchstones for me throughout this whole writing process, and have come up with The Secret History, The Great Gatsby, To The Lighthouse, A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World; each of those is a touchstone for me as a reader and as a person, but there's something about them which also moves and inspires me in my writing, and I find myself recurring to them over and over and over again.

* * *

Incidentally, I noticed that the review of The Secret River written by the person who sat in on our Contemporary Historical Fictions seminar last year has come out in the latest Meanjin and was vaguely happy to notice a footnoted acknowledgement of Clara Tuite and her honours seminar for sharing ideas at an early stage.

* * *

This may also be a good place to set down another reading list for the next few months / indefinite future, based on recentish recommendations and general 'ought to read for one reason or anothers', more or less in order:
* Ali Smith - The Accidental [because it seems like absolutely everyone is talking about this one - and see here]
* William Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury [because I've been mucking around with what I've been thinking of as 'floating dialogue' lately, and Wei tells me that Faulkner does something similar, plus he's been recommended to me in the past]
* Siri Hustvedt - What I Loved [see above]
* Sarah Waters - Night Watch [because Waters is fab and this one seems to be making waves - inter alia, shortlisted for the Orange prize, I noticed]
* Joyce Carol Oates - Them
* Nicole Krauss - The History of Love
* George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss or Middlemarch
* Ralph Ellison - The Invisible Man
* And, of course, Swann's Way - but then no one, least of all myself, really expects me to actually read the thing any time soon.

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, again

Listening to "The King of Carrot Flowers Pt One" just now, it came to me that In The Aeroplane Over The Sea would be a good record to which to fall in love; I can't justify the feeling, but of course feelings don't need to be justified, least of all those like this one.

If I had discovered and gotten into this album in high school, I probably would've pored over it in the way that I did with OK Computer and other totems of that time, subjecting it to endless musical and lyrical exegesis; today, I'm more inclined to just let it affect me, holding myself open to it just as the record itself seems to endlessly unfurl, both revealing and obscuring more of itself at every turn.

I've referred to it to a couple of people lately as the last album that changed my life (I'm not above a bit of imprecision in the interests of making a point), and I think it's telling that when they, naturally enough, have asked me what it sounds like, I've found myself unable to give any real sense of the thing...to do it justice, it seems more useful to try to give a sense of the record's effect than to focus on the sound of the music itself - although I wonder how useful it is for interested interlocutors to be met with a stream of "it's just so great, and it makes me happy and sad all at once and I find myself singing and humming bits of it at inappropriate moments and I can't explain it but it stirs me", etc, etc...

Anyway, all that being the case, it's probably unsurprising that I don't have anything more to say right now...it makes me dizzy.

* * *

(Bought the album today (gorgeous sleeve design, too) - as good a reason as any to set down a few more of my thoughts and feelings about it. I really believe that cds sound better than mp3s - and if it's just my imagination, well, what difference does that make?)

Stendhal - Scarlet and Black

I happened to be chatting with Sarah V just after I'd gotten to the midway point of this novel (the end of part 1) and at the time I said that it had, thus far, confounded and delighted me; her response was that I hadn't seen anything yet...I mention this because, taken as a whole, that little conversational snippet pretty neatly sums up my response to Scarlet and Black. I enjoyed it greatly and was pulled along by it despite my unfamiliarity with the milieu it depicts - early-mid 19th century France, moving from the provinces to the glittering drawing rooms of Paris and back, the nation still gasping after the changes brought by Napoleon and rent by the increasingly gaping chasm between the Liberals and the Ultra-Royalists, the Church (and its internescine disputes) a shadowy but overt influence over everything. Tone is lucid and witty in the novel's observation of manners and mores and the depictions are severely cutting in many respects; characters are revealed to us and follow their own developmental arcs concurrently and Julien, Madame de Rênal and Mathilde are all psychologically complex and believable figures...Stendhal tells us much and (I think) shows us more, but still we're left wondering about some of their actions, only to find our answer in the intensity of the passions, conflicts and inevitabilities which grip and impel them and the extremities of their characters.

To me, Julien seemed a bit of a Steerpike character, though more sympathetically rendered - almost a pure embodiment of will, endlessly calculating and manipulative, powerfully driven and utterly relentless, forcing his way by main cunning upwards from the lower echelons of a society bound by suffocating tradition, rigid hierarchy and decaying splendour. The difference, needless to say, is the role played by love and affection in Scarlet and Black; in the end, it's that as much as, and in conjunction with, the class divide which bring him undone - and then, too, that which has a (precisely?) commensurate role in Julien's coming into himself as, I think, a self-realised, admirable and tragic figure at the end. (Shades of The Outsider in the ending, too.)

Also - does every single work of French literature feature direct addresses to the reader by the author? Its recurrence here made me wonder if there was something about the language that made its writers more - or earlier - inclined to efface that assumed boundary -- but that's a thought to be pursued another day, I think.

Eva Cassidy - Songbird

I can't imagine that repetition could ever diminish the charm of the renditions on this record - they're so pure and lovely and in every way perfect. At risk of sounding mawkish, I feel that the music on Songbird (like all of Cassidy's music) is very affirmatory - and somehow all the more so in light of the singer's sadly untimely death.

Neil Finn - Try Whistling This

One of those albums from my late high school years whose singles summon a raft of associations and memories. One is of all those mornings and after-schools riding on the school bus with Daniel L, talking about music and sometimes other things, too (I wonder what became of him - last I heard, he was trying to make it as a journalist) - I have a distinct memory of his saying, in relation to this album (which would've been shortly after its release), that it made it clear that 'those other guys' had just been holding Neil Finn back during his Crowded House years. Another is quite simply to do with the song "Sinner" itself and how its gentle, melodic, quietly mysterious fluidity made me feel during those stormy days. Listening to it now, and particularly the run of singles in the first half of the middle of the record - "Try Whistling This", "She Will Have Her Way", "Sinner" - is a pleasant, contentment-inducing experience, Finn's quietly timeless rock-pop still retaining the particular colour and grace which has always distinguished it in my mind.