The weather person, aka meteorologist, announced this morning that the Phoenix forecast will be sunny and a blistering 110F today, so summer is kicking its happy way into the smoggy and urban skies of another season of brush fires and cook-outs. What better time to get down with our own bad selves and review some of our favorite reading material?
The order in which these books are listed will be that in which they have occurred to us, which I suppose is not quite arbitrary but rather beyond our meager abilities to quantify. That said, we present a mix of hardback and soft cover, fiction and non, anthologies and straight-throughs, as well as anything else between the covers, except Aunt Elsie, and she hasn't pulled herself outta bed in months. I think she's probably thirsty.
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, by Lester Bangs. Edited by Greil Marcus.
People who never knew Lester's writings from Creem, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and elsewhere often ask what this book is about. I usually reply that it's about four hundred pages. Either they get that joke or they don't. Then I try to explain that this book is proof positive that something as superficially disposable as record reviews cannot only be superior in many cases to the works they critique, but can stand alone as art themselves, however unlikely that may seem.
Editor Greil Marcus waded through rivers of writing to select the best, from lengthy understandings of Iggy and the Stooges to racism in new wave, from a brilliant analysis of his journey with The Clash to what I suppose you might call a comparison-contrast of The Troggs to James Taylor, one which the former Mr. Carly Simon loses, as in badly.
Yet it is not necessary for the reader to have the slightest a priori idea about any of these so-called artists. All that is required is passion, something in short supply in Bangs' time, just as in today's. If you happen to care about art, that helps, too. Mostly, though, all you need is to love to have a fine time and this book will send you reeling.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. The author, who was born in New York State, claimed that the title for his mythical city came from his filing cabinet which was labeled O-Z. I don't buy that, even if he really did say it. If you lower each letter in the abbreviation for his home state from NY to OZ, you get the name in question. The same thing happened in 2001 when the HAL computer was changed from IBM. anyway. . .
The book is a masterpiece. Indeed, it was so popular at the start of the 20th century that it spawned thirteen sequels, none of which were quite as cool as the original, but all of which still deserve a peak.
Notes From Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
This is almost no one else's favorite FD book and that's just fine with me. It is, however, pretty certainly the first existentialist novel, or novella, if that makes it easier. I'll admit, you probably won't be too certain what's going on until you get about halfway through this short novel. All the same, if you love to gripe out of a sense of everything in your world being completely bugfuck, then this book will instill spasms of delight.
Native Son, by Richard Wright.
The author wrote that he was determined that no banker's daughters would be caught weeping over the protagonist in any more of his novels. Well, he got that down just right. Bigger Thomas responds to his existence and his existence responds back by spitting in his face. This is one of the most disturbing books you'll ever read.
A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley.
King Lear, redone and improved upon, contemporaneity par excellence and lamented by the author. Her best book by miles.
The Dream of a Common Language, by Adrienne Rich.
Wherein the poet proves, once again, that poetry can be fierce and tender at the same time. People hate it when I say this, but there are lots of people I would rather see dead than Ms. Rich.
Trout Fishing in America, by Richard Brautigan.
Sometimes this is the greatest book ever written. Other times it is pure drivel. My opinion never changes. The book's contents, however, do. The notion that the act of trout fishing in America can itself become personified is either the most wonderful idea anyone ever had or else it's the insanity of too much reefer. However, any writing this tight can't be an accident. Can it?
JFK: The Book of the Film, by Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar.
The movie itself is one of the best treatments of a modern malaise ever done. The book of the movie is possibly even better in that it is completely annotated, with, on occasion, lengthy discussions about various points in the history of the thinking and research on the greatest unsolved mystery of the twentieth century. Anyone who wants to learn to write "cinematically" needs this book.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories, by Ernest Hemingway.
The great man's novels have held up less well than his frequently brilliant short stories, mostly because the stories have some semblance of plot or character development. "The Killers" could still be a great movie and the title piece is probably the most jarring short in the English language.
Macbeth, by William Shakespeare.
Not all great plays can withstand the migration from the written page to the stage and back again. This story, in the hands of whoever actually wrote it (and I choose to believe in the Bard), is so packed with deliberate contradictions that the reader/viewer cannot make reasonable interpretations of his or her own reality, just like things actually are in the world.
And now without further commentary, as fast as they come, are the rest.
The Female Man, by Joanna Russ.
Shatterday, by Harlan Ellison.
Miami and the Siege of Chicago, by Norman Mailer.
Mystery Train, by Greil Marcus.
The Pursuit of Loneliness, by Philip Slater.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson.
Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman.
For Keeps: Thirty years at the Movies, by Pauline Kael.
Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck.
The order in which these books are listed will be that in which they have occurred to us, which I suppose is not quite arbitrary but rather beyond our meager abilities to quantify. That said, we present a mix of hardback and soft cover, fiction and non, anthologies and straight-throughs, as well as anything else between the covers, except Aunt Elsie, and she hasn't pulled herself outta bed in months. I think she's probably thirsty.
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, by Lester Bangs. Edited by Greil Marcus.
People who never knew Lester's writings from Creem, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and elsewhere often ask what this book is about. I usually reply that it's about four hundred pages. Either they get that joke or they don't. Then I try to explain that this book is proof positive that something as superficially disposable as record reviews cannot only be superior in many cases to the works they critique, but can stand alone as art themselves, however unlikely that may seem.
Editor Greil Marcus waded through rivers of writing to select the best, from lengthy understandings of Iggy and the Stooges to racism in new wave, from a brilliant analysis of his journey with The Clash to what I suppose you might call a comparison-contrast of The Troggs to James Taylor, one which the former Mr. Carly Simon loses, as in badly.
Yet it is not necessary for the reader to have the slightest a priori idea about any of these so-called artists. All that is required is passion, something in short supply in Bangs' time, just as in today's. If you happen to care about art, that helps, too. Mostly, though, all you need is to love to have a fine time and this book will send you reeling.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. The author, who was born in New York State, claimed that the title for his mythical city came from his filing cabinet which was labeled O-Z. I don't buy that, even if he really did say it. If you lower each letter in the abbreviation for his home state from NY to OZ, you get the name in question. The same thing happened in 2001 when the HAL computer was changed from IBM. anyway. . .
The book is a masterpiece. Indeed, it was so popular at the start of the 20th century that it spawned thirteen sequels, none of which were quite as cool as the original, but all of which still deserve a peak.
Notes From Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
This is almost no one else's favorite FD book and that's just fine with me. It is, however, pretty certainly the first existentialist novel, or novella, if that makes it easier. I'll admit, you probably won't be too certain what's going on until you get about halfway through this short novel. All the same, if you love to gripe out of a sense of everything in your world being completely bugfuck, then this book will instill spasms of delight.
Native Son, by Richard Wright.
The author wrote that he was determined that no banker's daughters would be caught weeping over the protagonist in any more of his novels. Well, he got that down just right. Bigger Thomas responds to his existence and his existence responds back by spitting in his face. This is one of the most disturbing books you'll ever read.
A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley.
King Lear, redone and improved upon, contemporaneity par excellence and lamented by the author. Her best book by miles.
The Dream of a Common Language, by Adrienne Rich.
Wherein the poet proves, once again, that poetry can be fierce and tender at the same time. People hate it when I say this, but there are lots of people I would rather see dead than Ms. Rich.
Trout Fishing in America, by Richard Brautigan.
Sometimes this is the greatest book ever written. Other times it is pure drivel. My opinion never changes. The book's contents, however, do. The notion that the act of trout fishing in America can itself become personified is either the most wonderful idea anyone ever had or else it's the insanity of too much reefer. However, any writing this tight can't be an accident. Can it?
JFK: The Book of the Film, by Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar.
The movie itself is one of the best treatments of a modern malaise ever done. The book of the movie is possibly even better in that it is completely annotated, with, on occasion, lengthy discussions about various points in the history of the thinking and research on the greatest unsolved mystery of the twentieth century. Anyone who wants to learn to write "cinematically" needs this book.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories, by Ernest Hemingway.
The great man's novels have held up less well than his frequently brilliant short stories, mostly because the stories have some semblance of plot or character development. "The Killers" could still be a great movie and the title piece is probably the most jarring short in the English language.
Macbeth, by William Shakespeare.
Not all great plays can withstand the migration from the written page to the stage and back again. This story, in the hands of whoever actually wrote it (and I choose to believe in the Bard), is so packed with deliberate contradictions that the reader/viewer cannot make reasonable interpretations of his or her own reality, just like things actually are in the world.
And now without further commentary, as fast as they come, are the rest.
The Female Man, by Joanna Russ.
Shatterday, by Harlan Ellison.
Miami and the Siege of Chicago, by Norman Mailer.
Mystery Train, by Greil Marcus.
The Pursuit of Loneliness, by Philip Slater.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson.
Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman.
For Keeps: Thirty years at the Movies, by Pauline Kael.
Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck.
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