Here’s your 2 hour playlist
Regular Clusterflock readers know about my affection for late ’60s & early ’70s jams, a category which includes no Dylan or Van Morrison, because their long tracks are verbocentric, not musicocentric; no ambient, electronica or Terry Reid, because those are an entirely different sort of extended music; no Led Zeppelin because the longest of their good jams is a bit too short at 8:40; not even any Cream because their greatest tracks are all short and concise–their jams are boring.
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The feral bunny
in the “shade” of my Element.
Let’s say
you live in a neighborhood of 200 houses, and the combined total of all that the neighborhood spends on security–alarm systems, guard dogs, etc.–is one million dollars. But $500,000 of that is what YOU, all by yourself, spend. Wouldn’t your neighbors call you a little paranoid?
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I saw
a big SUV with a window sticker: not McCain/Palin, but just Sarah.
Which living writer
would you most like to sit down to tea and a bagel (or a cigar and Wild Turkey) with? Why? Several of my favorites have died in the past decade or so: Penelope Fitzgerald, WG Sebald, Guy Davenport, Paul Metcalf, Donald Justice. I had the chance to spend several hours last summer with Alan Garner and his wife Griselda, so I shouldn’t pick him, I suppose. I could go for Gordon Lish, but then he and I have had a running correspondence for 20 years, so maybe I shouldn’t pick him either. Maybe Louis Simpson, who at 84 or 85, might not be with us much longer. I’ve read so much of Simpson that we might not have as much to talk about, but he’s so opinionated and smart that it couldn’t help but be fun. Or should I go the other direction, a writer younger than I am? Maybe Mexico’s Ignacio Padilla. I should stop asking questions.
Am I once again
the last person in the country to know about something?
George Will
not speaking kindly of John McCain.
From the Washington Times, August 22
(I know of this because of WashingtonMonthly.com.)
“Mr. McCain will attend a fundraiser at the Beverly Hilton on Monday, the day the Democrats’ convention opens, bringing together top leaders from the Los Angeles business and entertainment communities, according to an invitation for the event obtained by The Washington Times.
Show business publication Variety reported that Angie Harmon, David Zucker, Jon Cryer, Lionel Chetwynd, Craig T. Nelson, Jon Voight, Craig Haffner and Robert Duvall are among those expected to attend.”
Robert Duvall should be ashamed of himself.
How 19th-century of me!
Yesterday afternoon, as I neared the end of my walk, I was for the moment in the street, but near the curb. A woman pulled recklessly out from the side street, almost directly in front of the car coming along the way toward me. I sucked in my breath, jumped up onto the parkway, and said, “Good grief! What a loon!”
Robert Wyatt
may be one of those musicians whose music almost requires a “personal” relationship between artist and listener–the more we read about him, the more we listen to one work in the context of another work, the deeper the history we have with him, the more we admire him. Sheila would agree with me, I think, in often admiring Wyatt himself more than his music, though we both adore some of his music. Take a listen to “A Beautiful Peace” from Comicopera (2007) and see what you think. If you like ambient/experimental, try “Pastafari” from the same record.
September elimae
The new issue of elimae is now posted.
There are multitudinous
ways in which Ray Davies and I differ, but not least among them is that I do not “got a big fat mama trying to break me.”
Robert Giroux
died. If you’re a complete book nerd like I am, you’ll know what this means.
Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu
“She was very beautiful, curiously beautiful, for a person in her station. She was very like that Lady Hamilton who was Nelson’s sorceress– elegantly beautiful, but perfectly low and stupid. I believe, to do him justice, he only intended to ruin her, but she was cunning enough to insist upon marriage.”
Anthony Trollope on Anthony Trollope
“I do not think it probable that my name will remain among those who in the next century will be known as the writers of English prose fiction. . . .” (from An Autobiography, chiefly written in 1875)
Strandloper
When Alan Garner’s Strandloper (Harvill) appeared in 1996, it was immediately notable for a couple of uncommon reasons: Read more
For Cindy, tongue-in-cheekily
Below the fold is my pastel based on a painting by Frith.
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Dear Clusterflock
Does your first contact with a band or musician tend to remain your favorite? Songs of Love and Hate, my first Leonard Cohen record, is still my favorite. Ditto Life’s Rich Pageant by REM, Bizarro by The Wedding Present and The Yes Album. Read more
And by the way
you could do worse than buy yourself The Kinks’ “Sunny Afternoon.”
(Okay. I’ll quit posting now.)
Don’t tell Cindy
but I finished The Mill on the Floss last night. It’s not flawless, by any means, but it is very good. I had not expected it to be so full of local dialect and humor, and more than once I forgot for a moment that it was George Eliot and not Anthony Trollope that I was reading. And I have just gotten my email that Trollope’s An Autobiography awaits me at the bookstore.
Terry Reid
I’m not a major Terry Reid fan by any means, but “Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace” is a rockin’ little number, redolent of the early ’70s (in a good sense, as with Free, for example).
Bunny in the rosemary
The Mill on the Floss: George Eliot
“Not that Tom was in awe of his uncle’s mental superiority: indeed, he had made up his mind that he didn’t want to be a gentleman farmer, because he shouldn’t like to be such a thin-legged silly fellow as his uncle Pullet — a molly-coddle, in fact. A boy’s sheepishness is by no means a sign of overmastering reverence: and while you are making encouraging advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer. The only consolation I can suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you have mastered a restive horse, or thrashed a drayman, or have got a gun in your hand, that these shy juniors feel you to be a truly admirable and enviable character.”
p. 98 (Penguin, 2003)
Dear Clusterflock
Did you watch the Rick Warren/John McCain/Barack Obama show last night? I got tired of McCain delivering punchlines and making impossible-to-back-up brags (Did you hear he’s going to defeat evil?) instead of answering questions.
New elimae
The August elimae is now posted.