(no subject)
Let's see how many months this lasts...
Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota- Chuck Klosterman
Alright, so, when I first finished this book I wrote this huge thing about how I had a hard time relating to him because the music he listened to when he was a teenager sucked. The whole book is about how 80's metal influenced the way he grew up and how it relates to him now. After reading his description of Guns N Roses' Appetite for Destruction, I listened to it and kind of wanted to kill myself.
Well, looking at my initial reaction to the book, I feel like I missed the point completely so I am starting anew. I think about my music when I was a teenager, and its pretty bad too. The exception I make (besides random albums that I still like) is Radiohead. One of my coworkers is the encyclopedia of Radiohead, and on a dead Monday night it was just us working and we listened to every album and talked about the music etcetcetc... and it made me realize Radiohead was a big part of my adolescence because their career seems to run parallel to my development...kinda. I saw "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Paranoid Android" on 120 Minutes and was really sold on this band, they were different from anything I had really listened to prior to this. My first piece of journalism that made it into the high school paper was a review of Kid A that I wrote in 10th grade. Nobody gave a shit because everyone had a bizarre obsession with Dave Matthews and that crap, but I remember it was the first album I listened to that I sat down and deeply analyzed. Coincidentally, Klosterman talks about how Kid A could be interpreted as a prediction of 9/11 in Killing Yourself To Live. Of course THAT is a coincidence too, but shit like that is fun to think about sometimes so long as you can separate reality from batshit crazy conspiracy theory. Finally, Hail to the Thief was the first overtly political music that I listened to and it came out not too long after I really began to give a shit about something bigger than myself and began to establish some hint of a political identity.
What I'm saying is I can relate Radiohead (and Incubus, who is kinda meh to me nowadays) to my youth the way he does with Motley Crue and Guns N Roses. That was his point. I think he is an engaging writer in general. He's snarky and pop-culturey, but he is also a genuinely intelligent person who makes astute observations and argues well. See? He managed to convince me to give goddamn Guns N Roses another honest chance.
The Road-Cormac McCarthy
A lot of people say this is Cormac McCarthy's best book, so I started with this one. Laurence Shine had a huge boner for this author, maybe because he's a mick bastard like him. I ended up liking this book a lot, but it is hard to get into. It's dark and depressing, and the plot is a man and his son walking down a road after some apocalyptic event happened that killed just about everyone and made most survivors into cannibals. That's the apocalypse for ya amirite? It took me 3 days to get through the first 50 pages, and then I read the last 250 or so in a day, so it does become really engaging.
The characters don't say too much to each other, but there is a lot of development of them, and by the end of the book I felt for them and their situation and really wanted them to be okay. The way McCarthy describes things is also really creative (and sort of fucked up.)
I guess a movie has been made based on the book with the guy who played Aragorn (apparently he likes to be in movies with lots and lots of walking) but its release has been delayed many times... which in movie land translates to: it probably sucks. Charlize Theron also campaigned to play the main character's wife (who is in literally 5 pages of the book in a flashback, but has top-billing on IMDB)... I'll go see the movie because I liked the book a lot, I just don't understand why people mess so much with good things. I can see producers having a meeting about deciding to make this movie:
"No Country for Old Men swept the Oscars!"
"Let's make every Cormac McCarthy novel into a movie, that means like, 20 Oscars, right!?!?"
"Yes! Let's start with The Road, it won the Pulitzer, that's like the Oscar for books!"
"You are brilliant, now let's make sure it has the exact same mood as No Country for Old Men even though they are two completely different pieces of work. Critics like dark and depressing this week. Oh and call Charlize Theron!"
(Hires some male hookers, does numerous bumps of coke off their gold American Express cards, and sits around while raking more money in by making decisions based on style over substance)
Of course, I haven't seen the movie yet. It might actually be, you know, good.
The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx- Arthur Nersesian
This is the second in a five-book series where New York City is attacked by chemical bombs that force the city to be permanently evacuated. All the displaced people are sent to an exact replica of NYC that is built in Nevada, but of course the city is soon taken over physically and politically by two huge gangs, making the government abandon the city except to dump people into it and make sure nobody gets out.
Each book is supposed to be able to stand alone too, and the two books (the first is called The Swing Voter of Staten Island) are really different. The first book is a man with no memory waking up in the "Rescue City" and spending a week there during a transition of gang rule, trying to find a way out of the city. It is extremely violent and aggressively political. There is a lot of anger behind this book, and the messages it puts across are pretty powerful. Mostly that history is written by the winners, until the winners are beaten to death by the society that they created.
The second book picks up directly where the first one left off, but the main character, Uli, is channeling the memory of the man who would eventually conduct the terrorist attack on NYC. He is the brother of real-life urban planner Robert Moses, who is portrayed as a momma's boy who just wants the money and the power, and hopes to crush his older brother in whatever way possible. I didn't know why Nersesian picked such a random person to satirize and make into a huge asshole, but then I remembered that Moses did a lot of the planning for Niagara Falls, New York... which is kind of a huge shithole now, as you can partially see if you drive down the Robert Moses Parkway.
So. Um. I guess its pretty cool to have that sort of distant connection to all that sad stuff. Wow that sounded stupid. Anyways, I'm not sure which book I like better because they are both a lot different. This one is definitely a lot more character-driven because it really goes into detail of Paul Moses' life, and Robert makes appearances in different ways that may or may not be purposefully ruining Paul's more simple life. The first one has a lot of shit going on that makes you not want to stop reading, but between all the bizarre action there is an incredibly intelligent story developing.
I don't know, a big literary trend lately is book series ($$$$$), and I am kind of glad that this series hasn't gotten much attention. It is published by a Brooklyn-based independent publisher called Akashic and there is hardly any information about it on teh internets except for blurbs on Nersesian's own web site. There are even some strange grammatical errors that are the mark of a true indie publisher (I guess.) It was weird because they stuck out but did not bother me because it made me see the writer's thought process as he was putting things down to paper. Unprofessional but forgiveable...
Anyways, I recommend these books, and am sort of pissed that I have to wait until October for the next one.
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West-Cormac McCarthy
This book was a pain in the ass to read, it was very hard for me to follow. I got through it though and I am glad I did not give up on it even though I was very close many times. I will probably read it again down the line because it deserves my full and undivided attention. McCarthy wrote this book in 1985, when I can imagine him to be a little more spry and willing to be densely detailed and random... The Road was written in 2006, and even though it is a brilliant book (and a lot better than Blood Meridian in my initial opinion) there is a sense of urgency to his writing.
Basically, it is about a kid who runs away from home and gets involved in Wild West antics, like scalping Injuns and hanging out in saloons drinkin sasparilla. Of course there is a lot more to it, it is actually really sad at times and at other times its just ridiculous with its body count. It's like No Country for Old Men on cocaine with how many people are senselessly slaughtered. I think I need to find a Sparknotes for this book though, as much as I hate to admit it. I think I missed a lot, but such is life. I need to move forward dammit. OK THE END.
Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota- Chuck Klosterman
Alright, so, when I first finished this book I wrote this huge thing about how I had a hard time relating to him because the music he listened to when he was a teenager sucked. The whole book is about how 80's metal influenced the way he grew up and how it relates to him now. After reading his description of Guns N Roses' Appetite for Destruction, I listened to it and kind of wanted to kill myself.
Well, looking at my initial reaction to the book, I feel like I missed the point completely so I am starting anew. I think about my music when I was a teenager, and its pretty bad too. The exception I make (besides random albums that I still like) is Radiohead. One of my coworkers is the encyclopedia of Radiohead, and on a dead Monday night it was just us working and we listened to every album and talked about the music etcetcetc... and it made me realize Radiohead was a big part of my adolescence because their career seems to run parallel to my development...kinda. I saw "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Paranoid Android" on 120 Minutes and was really sold on this band, they were different from anything I had really listened to prior to this. My first piece of journalism that made it into the high school paper was a review of Kid A that I wrote in 10th grade. Nobody gave a shit because everyone had a bizarre obsession with Dave Matthews and that crap, but I remember it was the first album I listened to that I sat down and deeply analyzed. Coincidentally, Klosterman talks about how Kid A could be interpreted as a prediction of 9/11 in Killing Yourself To Live. Of course THAT is a coincidence too, but shit like that is fun to think about sometimes so long as you can separate reality from batshit crazy conspiracy theory. Finally, Hail to the Thief was the first overtly political music that I listened to and it came out not too long after I really began to give a shit about something bigger than myself and began to establish some hint of a political identity.
What I'm saying is I can relate Radiohead (and Incubus, who is kinda meh to me nowadays) to my youth the way he does with Motley Crue and Guns N Roses. That was his point. I think he is an engaging writer in general. He's snarky and pop-culturey, but he is also a genuinely intelligent person who makes astute observations and argues well. See? He managed to convince me to give goddamn Guns N Roses another honest chance.
The Road-Cormac McCarthy
A lot of people say this is Cormac McCarthy's best book, so I started with this one. Laurence Shine had a huge boner for this author, maybe because he's a mick bastard like him. I ended up liking this book a lot, but it is hard to get into. It's dark and depressing, and the plot is a man and his son walking down a road after some apocalyptic event happened that killed just about everyone and made most survivors into cannibals. That's the apocalypse for ya amirite? It took me 3 days to get through the first 50 pages, and then I read the last 250 or so in a day, so it does become really engaging.
The characters don't say too much to each other, but there is a lot of development of them, and by the end of the book I felt for them and their situation and really wanted them to be okay. The way McCarthy describes things is also really creative (and sort of fucked up.)
I guess a movie has been made based on the book with the guy who played Aragorn (apparently he likes to be in movies with lots and lots of walking) but its release has been delayed many times... which in movie land translates to: it probably sucks. Charlize Theron also campaigned to play the main character's wife (who is in literally 5 pages of the book in a flashback, but has top-billing on IMDB)... I'll go see the movie because I liked the book a lot, I just don't understand why people mess so much with good things. I can see producers having a meeting about deciding to make this movie:
"No Country for Old Men swept the Oscars!"
"Let's make every Cormac McCarthy novel into a movie, that means like, 20 Oscars, right!?!?"
"Yes! Let's start with The Road, it won the Pulitzer, that's like the Oscar for books!"
"You are brilliant, now let's make sure it has the exact same mood as No Country for Old Men even though they are two completely different pieces of work. Critics like dark and depressing this week. Oh and call Charlize Theron!"
(Hires some male hookers, does numerous bumps of coke off their gold American Express cards, and sits around while raking more money in by making decisions based on style over substance)
Of course, I haven't seen the movie yet. It might actually be, you know, good.
The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx- Arthur Nersesian
This is the second in a five-book series where New York City is attacked by chemical bombs that force the city to be permanently evacuated. All the displaced people are sent to an exact replica of NYC that is built in Nevada, but of course the city is soon taken over physically and politically by two huge gangs, making the government abandon the city except to dump people into it and make sure nobody gets out.
Each book is supposed to be able to stand alone too, and the two books (the first is called The Swing Voter of Staten Island) are really different. The first book is a man with no memory waking up in the "Rescue City" and spending a week there during a transition of gang rule, trying to find a way out of the city. It is extremely violent and aggressively political. There is a lot of anger behind this book, and the messages it puts across are pretty powerful. Mostly that history is written by the winners, until the winners are beaten to death by the society that they created.
The second book picks up directly where the first one left off, but the main character, Uli, is channeling the memory of the man who would eventually conduct the terrorist attack on NYC. He is the brother of real-life urban planner Robert Moses, who is portrayed as a momma's boy who just wants the money and the power, and hopes to crush his older brother in whatever way possible. I didn't know why Nersesian picked such a random person to satirize and make into a huge asshole, but then I remembered that Moses did a lot of the planning for Niagara Falls, New York... which is kind of a huge shithole now, as you can partially see if you drive down the Robert Moses Parkway.
So. Um. I guess its pretty cool to have that sort of distant connection to all that sad stuff. Wow that sounded stupid. Anyways, I'm not sure which book I like better because they are both a lot different. This one is definitely a lot more character-driven because it really goes into detail of Paul Moses' life, and Robert makes appearances in different ways that may or may not be purposefully ruining Paul's more simple life. The first one has a lot of shit going on that makes you not want to stop reading, but between all the bizarre action there is an incredibly intelligent story developing.
I don't know, a big literary trend lately is book series ($$$$$), and I am kind of glad that this series hasn't gotten much attention. It is published by a Brooklyn-based independent publisher called Akashic and there is hardly any information about it on teh internets except for blurbs on Nersesian's own web site. There are even some strange grammatical errors that are the mark of a true indie publisher (I guess.) It was weird because they stuck out but did not bother me because it made me see the writer's thought process as he was putting things down to paper. Unprofessional but forgiveable...
Anyways, I recommend these books, and am sort of pissed that I have to wait until October for the next one.
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West-Cormac McCarthy
This book was a pain in the ass to read, it was very hard for me to follow. I got through it though and I am glad I did not give up on it even though I was very close many times. I will probably read it again down the line because it deserves my full and undivided attention. McCarthy wrote this book in 1985, when I can imagine him to be a little more spry and willing to be densely detailed and random... The Road was written in 2006, and even though it is a brilliant book (and a lot better than Blood Meridian in my initial opinion) there is a sense of urgency to his writing.
Basically, it is about a kid who runs away from home and gets involved in Wild West antics, like scalping Injuns and hanging out in saloons drinkin sasparilla. Of course there is a lot more to it, it is actually really sad at times and at other times its just ridiculous with its body count. It's like No Country for Old Men on cocaine with how many people are senselessly slaughtered. I think I need to find a Sparknotes for this book though, as much as I hate to admit it. I think I missed a lot, but such is life. I need to move forward dammit. OK THE END.