townesvanfaulkner

Since this is likely my last day posting until 2006, I thought I would make it a mega-post to tide you over through the holidays. I know how everyone will be jonesin' for some tvf.

This one is pretty cool. I heard one of her stories a couple of weeks ago on NPR. She's also the sister-in-law of a regular tvf reader, but perhaps we'll save that for a future Googling Kingsport.

http://www.mdn.org/2004/STAFF/SHELTONM.HTM

Merry Christmas everyone.

In my ongoing effort to pimp the genius of Townes Van Zandt, I bring you a series of quotes.


If I had a nickel I'd find a game
If I won a dollar I'd make it rain
If it rained an ocean I'd drink it dry
And lay me down dissatisfied

-From "Rex's Blues"
Townes Van Zandt

Writing Style-6.5
Originality-8.2
Plot-1.2
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-8.4
Overall-6.4

I thought going into this book that I would either love or hate it, but surprisingly I simply just like it fairly well.

About the first 40 pages were nearly unbearable. They made absolutely no sense to me I must confess. I started practically skimming and chugged along simply because I hate to quit on books, especially in the first couple of hundred pages or if the book is less than 300 pages total. [For example, a post is coming soon in which I talk about a book that I recently gave up on at page 200 out of 500.]

After this schizo-drunken introduction, it calms down quite a bit. Then it is simply Miller’s day-to-day life in gay Paree, which pretty much consists of living on little or no money, bumming from his friends, drinking, and last but certainly not least, sleeping with whores. I guess it’s the honesty about his obsession with the whores and their Cunts, really the female Cunt in general, that most people come away with from the book.

There is absolutely no plot whatsoever, so if you are a fan of plot, this book is not for you. The writing is pretty beautiful though. I mean, he’s no James Agee IMHO, but if a guy can get you to read 300 pages of absolute nothingness then he’s obviously a pretty talented wordsmith.

The one anecdote that stood out however was a story about Miller taking a religious kid who was coming off a two year vow of celibacy to a whorehouse. The kid didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to shit in the bidet in the whore’s bedroom. So, he shits, the whore goes off on him and kicks him out and he is terribly embarrassed and takes it as a sign that he shouldn’t have been preparing to copulate with a whore and renews his vow of celibacy. I think that if this story were taken out of the novel, it would stand on its own very well and be a classic short story. I loved it.

So, we have to ask the question—what’s the big deal with this book? Why is it so popular and why do some people hate it? Well I think there are a number of factors at work. The first that comes to mind is the identifiable and brutally honest glorification of the Female Reproductive Organs [or FRO]. This is at the same time intriguing, comforting, and repellant. At the same time that he glorifies women he must also degrade them. This paradox, common in men, is extremely interesting and always makes for good reading. In short, this book is grossly misogynistic.

It’s also grossly self-absorbed and egotistical. This book actually rivals Armies of the Night by Normal Mailer as the most self-absorbed, egotistical book that I have ever read. This facet of the novel is also fascinating and disgusting at the same time. I think that there is a brand of depressive, artistic genius that is so sensitive to the suffering of the world that they must become wrapped up in self-gratification constantly, often to the point of addiction, for the sake of self-preservation. I think that ultimately this might be the root of these paradoxes. In other words, someone may be so attuned to what’s wrong with the world or themselves that they can’t live with the world as it is or as most do and they end up hating themselves. In order to cope, they must become self-absorbed and withdrawn. I think that often this self-absorption is accompanied by drug addiction, alcoholism, sex addiction, and so forth and sometimes just plain dropping out of society or moving around a lot or ramblin’ so to speak.

At any rate, this self-absorbed artistic genius motif also makes for interesting reading. Many people are drawn to this type of person, and many people hate them because they feel like they should buck up and not be so worthless. [Many I think are jealous that they don’t have the social excuse to go off and do these things themselves.]

So, the book is misogynistic, egotistical, and plotless? Yes, I’m afraid so. But, you know, by the time I finished it, I was strangely charmed. Not that I plan to go read Tropic of Capricorn any time soon, but I’m really glad that I picked this one up and slogged through the rough parts. It’s really great writing and Miller is simply an intriguing character and you get to go deep into his mind as he goes about his daily life as a starving, horny artist in Paris. Good times.

The name for this blog is an amalgam of two brilliant artists. William Faulkner we've pretty much all heard of, I'm sure, but, the Townes Van... 'Where does that come from?' some might ask.

I'd like to introduce my readers to Townes Van Zandt, in my humble opinion the greatest songwriter the world has ever known. And many agree including Steve Earle who declared Townes the greatest songwriter ever and then went on to say, "I'll say that standing on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots". [When someone told Townes about this quote he retorted, "I've seen Bob Dylan's bodyguards and Steve's not getting anywhere near his coffee table"]

I found this radio program that KUT in Austin, TX produced to go along with a new Townes documentary, which I can't wait to get ahold of.

I strongly encourage you to give it a listen. Townes led an interesting life and it's got some great song clips scattered throughout as an introduction to his music.

http://www.kut.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Townes_Van_Zandt

Writing Style-6.1
Originality-7.5
Plot-6.5
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.2
Overall-6.5

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read it right on the heels of Jude the Obscure and they fit together fairly well. They are both staunchly feminist and attack societal strictures and institutions such as religion and marriage. Main Street is quite a bit lighter however, for the most part.

It is the story of Carol Kennicott, a well-educated young woman from Minneapolis who marries a country doctor and moves out to the small town of Gopher Prairie to make a life with him.

She misses her big city life with cultured friends and art and is pretty bored with Gopher Prairie. She resolves to transform the people of Gopher Prairie for the sake of her own sanity and their edification. For example, she forms a library board and encourages reading of more serious works and she forms a drama club to perform plays for the town. With each attempt, she is thwarted in her efforts, usually fairly comically. The town is simply happy with their simple, country-bumpkin lives, their blatant hypocrisies that aren’t so obvious to them, and their ability to not question anything about their lives any deeper than how to make more money, or what to eat for dinner, or what the other townsfolk thinks of them. For someone who has lived in the city and/or in the North and then returned to small-town life in the South, the characters in Gopher Prairie are definitely recognizable and Carol’s frustrations with them are easily relatable.

In the end, she is faced with many of the same questions that plagued Jude Hawley and Sue Bridehead – how to fit into a society that they are completely unable to relate to; how to deal with childrearing on top of these other problems; how to remain a good wife while maintaining her own individuality and opinions.

Lewis does a good job of complicating some of these issues (it’s not all about making fun of hicks). Carol’s husband Will is not really a bad guy. In arguments that they have about Carol’s unhappiness, he makes good coherent arguments about the good qualities of Gopher Prairie’s citizens. Carol gains a ton of respect for Will as he goes about his job as a country doctor and comes to understand how difficult it can be.

I’d certainly recommend this book if you enjoy these themes. It presents a great contrast between city and town living in the American Midwest in the early part of the 20th century. It’s surprisingly feminist to have been published in 1920 (I think) and to have been so well received by the public at the time. Even though it has several levels, it could be boiled down to the story of a bored housewife. I think that it was and continues to be of supreme importance to tell the stories of bored housewives. I’d also point out that it was around this time that we gave bored housewives the right to vote.

I haven't done one of these in awhile.

Who's that in the upper right hand corner?

http://www.dcvols.com/flagfootball2004/

And, 3rd photo, slightly right of center, way in the back.

http://www.dcvols.com/whitehouse/

Writing Style-6.6
Originality-6.9
Plot-7.1
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.9
Overall-6.8

I’ve read several great memoirs within the last year or so in this vein; most notably Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr. This book ranks right up there with those.

This is a personal account of the author’s trip to, through, and out of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic. Basically, the dude has been an addict for nearly as long as he can remember. He started stealing alcohol and getting drunk when he was like 8 or something and then quickly moved on to pot and then harder and harder drugs until at age 23 he’s constantly drunk and his drug of choice is crack. He describes daily vomiting, passing out, shitting blood, etc.

When the book opens, he wakes up on a plane with his face and body torn up all to pieces and he has no idea what he’s doing or memory of how he got there. This essentially is his rock bottom and so, with the help of his parents, he checks into one of the premiere rehab clinics in the country.

Alright, I might as well own up to it, this is the current *throat clearing noise* Oprah book club selection. With this book, she returns to recommending contemporary authors after a hiatus of 2 or 3 years (much to the joy of the publishing industry).

It’s really an extremely edgy and gritty book. Frey talks frankly about all of the nastiest aspects of addiction and addicts without glorifying it at all.

It’s extremely fun to read though. Laugh out loud funny at times. The characters that he is surrounded by in rehab are really too good to be true. So good in fact, I wonder if there were some embellished aspects in places.

The writing is pretty monotone, it gets to be a little repetitive, but not too bad really. There are no quotation marks or paragraph indentations. I tend to like these type of gimmicks. It looks beautiful on the page, much like Cormac McCarthy’s writing. And it fits the sort of frantic nervousness and addiction and rage at the center of the story.

Everything that makes up a good memoir and story is included here (not to mention what would make a good movie). Not only are the characters great, but there is a forbidden love story and there is mysteries that Frey adeptly answers in little chunks that keep you turning pages. For instance, what happened to him at the beginning of the book? What is his friend Leonard’s mysterious background? What went on with Frey and his parents such that he turned out this way?

I also like that Frey gets turned on to Taoism in the book. I’ve always been a big fan of this philosophy and have adopted it myself (or tried to as best I can) at certain times. Frey is sort of faced with a problem that I am often frightened by. What if at some point in your life you are in dire need of religion, but are completely incapable of believing in anything that requires faith? It’s an utterly terrifying thought.

My biggest problem with the book is the idea that an addict can simply choose not to be an addict. Frey apparently chooses this route and has been sober ever since. But, I agree with his therapist that he is one in a million. I’m very happy for him and have the utmost respect for his courage and determination and success, but I can’t help but think that this idea is a common one and a dangerous one to reinforce, especially given the circulation of an *throat clearing noise* Oprah selection. I know it’s a memoir so it’s about Frey’s journey towards sobriety, but I would have liked to have seen his triumph cast in a slightly different light—not so, ‘I’m gonna kick this thing’s ass myself, because I’m a badass and everyone else be damned’ and then he goes on to, in fact, kick it’s ass; but that his particular case was special in some way or another that helped him beat the overwhelming odds that has a more complex explanation than, ‘I’m a badass, so I kicked it’s ass.’

Frey seems like a pretty interesting character. Check out this Salon article on him and the book.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/04/19/frey/

I particularly like the tattoo “F.T.B.I.T.T.T.D.”, which stands for Fuck the Bullshit it’s Time to Throw Down. I also don’t much mind the ego and self-promotion. For some reason, I’m often a fan of this tactic, ala Ryan Adams.

Overall, this is a really great memoir. It’s got it all. Don’t miss it just because you-know-who recommends it. Also, make sure and read A Heartbreaking Work, which Frey colorfully dismisses in his interview. It’s actually better. Sorry James.

Ornitholoco posted this a couple of days ago in the comments of the National Book Awards post. I wanted to highlight it though because people don't always check back in and see new comments on old posts.

Make sure and check the other years back to 1997.

Thanks Ornitholoco!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/books/review/tenbest.html

This actually looks like a decent site in it's inception stage, not quite as dubious as that last site I found my reviews on which made up a random number of stars.

http://www.authorstore.com/c.p/0375400117

Writing Style-5.6
Originality-7.4
Plot-8.3
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-4.2
Overall-7.2

If you read my post the day before this came out, then you know the background. This is the fourth book in a now planned to be seven book series called A Song of Ice and Fire. It is epic fantasy. But it’s different.

Most fantasy kind of sucks, I know. The genre has very dedicated fans that have reasonably low standards in my opinion. See Robert Jordan.

I’ll say it again, because you should take my word for it… this is different. This is brilliant storytelling. A lot of the same devices are there: kings and queens, knights, dragons, magic, etc. But the scope of the storytelling is so grand even when compared to other “epic” fantasy series that have multiple 1000+ page books.

Martin apparently does a ton of research on medieval England and wanted to model the island of Westeros on an England with seven major kingdoms in it. He at first intended it to be mainly court intrigue, diplomacy, spying, sabotage, war, etc. between the kings and important playmakers among these seven kingdoms for power over the whole, or within each kingdom, or all the way down to lordship over a certain castle or province. But slowly magic, the supernatural, and dragons began to creep into the story, so he went with it.

The manner in which he tells the story makes it feel real. It’s not the typical linear journey where an unlikely hero finds a magical object or has to go find a magical object and then there’s a long journey through distant lands populated by diverse, strange creatures like dwarves and elves and orcs and so forth. These books are told from the viewpoints of dozens of major characters both bad and good. In fact, the line between good and evil is not nearly as distinct as in the typical fantasy story. Someone that you abhor in the first book may become your favorite character whom you are rooting for by the third book and vice versa. But don’t get too connected to any of the characters because Martin is not afraid to kill off anyone, and I mean anyone. The characters are extremely dynamic with their modus operandi, raison d’etres, and motivations changing as the story progresses and powers shift and loved ones die and situations change.

This all goes into making the story feel as though you are reading a history of a real world in an alternate universe. It doesn’t feel contrived like many stories that one human being comes up with. As you read Lord of the Rings, you KNOW that what’s his name… Viggo Mortenson isn’t going to die in battle before he becomes the king, you KNOW that Frodo and Sam are going to succeed. So there’s really nothing at stake. It’s a wonderful story, but it’s still just a story. In A Song of Ice and Fire you aren’t sure that the good guys are going to prevail, in fact, you aren’t even certain who the good guys are. And that seems to be more like real life. Is America a beacon of freedom or are we war-mongering capitalist pigs? Who are the good guys and who are the bad in the whole Israel v. Palestine thing? Why did World War One happen, again? Was Napoleon a hero or a villain, did he change from one to the other at any point? How about Che Guevara? How about LBJ? Real life isn’t really Frodo and Sam vs. Sauron.

And that’s exactly what I think makes A Song of Ice and Fire so brilliant and rises it up above the muck that is the fantasy genre.

I don’t want to get into talking about the plot in A Feast for Crows specifically, because to even begin to would give away some things that occur in the first three books.

From what the author says, A Feast for Crows is actually only half of the book that he intended making the series go to seven books instead of the originally planned six. When he surpassed 1400 pages, he knew he had to cut it somehow. Instead of cutting it in half chronologically, he cut certain characters' chapters out. So A Feast for Crows revolves around a certain set of characters and the next book which is mostly already finished, titled A Dance of Dragons, is a second set of characters along the same period of time.

One caveat here: the epic sweep of the narration is at the same time the series’ greatest strength but is in serious jeopardy of becoming it’s greatest weakness as the series progresses. There are SO many major characters, there are SO many kingdoms, castles, lordships, etc that people are vying for, and there are SO many parallel plot lines that it becomes hard to follow. Especially, when there are years in between the publication of one book to the next. I read a chapter that is from the perspective of one character and tells their story and then by the time I cycle through most of the other characters and their chapters and get back around to the same character, I’ve almost forgotten where I left off with them and what’s happening in their life. Of course, I think that this will someday make for great re-reading fodder. I think that this series would actually be better enjoyed if you started it once all of the books were published and did not have gaps in between to forget what's going on. (Make a note somewhere that in around 2014 you should remember to pick up a copy of A Game of Thrones at the bookstore.)

I think that Martin has slowly widened his scope and cast of characters and that is a very good thing, but if he takes it any further, he is in danger of completely confounding the reader. I would like to see that trend climax with the Feast of Crows/Dance of Dragons book(s) and for him to start narrowing the focus again as we build towards a finale.

In conclusion, if you are like me and you like the concepts that come with fantasy or sci-fi, but you find that most of it is mindless crap, then you should definitely check out George R. R. Martin. If you are a diehard fantasy fan then you should LOVE this stuff. If you’ve ever had an inkling of desire for kings and queens and knights and dragons and wizards and ghosts and so forth but were afraid to try this stuff or were turned off by the stereotypical fantasy fanboy or that section of the bookstore then this might be the time you want to jump on in, the water is fine. If this just isn’t your cup of tea then that’s cool too, I can make my peace with that.

That's right, I got a 360. On the launch date, in fact, about 20 minutes after midnite on Nov. 22. I had preordered one through Gamestop on Aug. 22 and they called to tell me that they couldn't guarantee me one until after xmas. So, I figured, 'Okay, I guess I'll have to wait in line somewhere.'

So, my plan was to go after work to the Oak Ridge Wal-mart and wait in line until they went on sale at midnite, but when I checked in at Wal-mart on my lunch break around 11:30 am I found that there were already about 10-12 crazy SOB's already in line and that they only had 26 of the premium packages and 22 of the core (sucker's) package. So, I figured that I wasn't gonna make it if I waited until 5:30 when I got off work.

I went back to work did a couple of hours of essential work and then told my boss I was sick. I got back to Wal-mart and was in line at about 2:00 pm. I was #18. By 3:00 they had run out of the premiums and the core line started filling. I think they ran out of the core at around 7:00 pm.

If you do the math, I waited in line for 10 hours.

It was actually kind of fun. I hadn't done anything like that since Episode One came out when I waited in line 6 hours for tickets.

Wal-mart (who I'm not a big fan of, btw) was pretty gracious. They gave us chairs and doughnuts and bottled water. And they sat us in the magazines and books aisle. I started reading the new Oprah selection, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (expect a review soon).

So I waited and waited and waited. Amy brought me a sandwich and a latte for dinner and sat with me for about an hour. Thanks, babe.

Two people sold their place in line to other people for $50 each. There was almost a fight. Someone said there was a fight at a Wal-mart in Knoxville and that 6 people were arrested. Good times.

The thing cost me 10 hours and $399 and it was worth every second and penny. I got Call of Duty 2, Madden 06, Perfect Dark Zero, and Halo 2 (I never had the first xbox, but played Fern's boyfriend's).

Halo 2 is considered by most to be the best online game for consoles. It looks even better on the 360. I've finished the Call of Duty campaign and it was awesome. Online, it could rival Halo, but it has SERIOUS lag issues that keep me from playing it. Perfect Dark is awesome and probably so far the most popular of the launch day releases. I really like it for the cooperative play. It's not just the typical going through the same levels with a buddy standing beside you shooting everything up. They actually have levels that require you to be different characters at different points on the map and help each other and solve simple puzzles together. It's terrific and I wish more games would be designed for this because it's extremely fun. Madden 06 leaves a lot to be desired. I think they threw it together in a hurry and left a lot out. The player's arm muscles and the stadiums look amazing but as for actual gameplay, I like NCAA 06 on the PS2 much better. However, I have my xbox online so I've been playing football games on there which is much funner than playing the computer. As long as your opponent doesn't quit the game because they are losing. That burns me up.

Anyhoo, this is what I've been up to. It's also slowed up my reading and songwriting and rendered me pretty much useless.

If or when any of my TVF readership gets one of these things, let me know. We should do some online gaming. My gamertag is townesvanzandt. Townesvanfaulkner was too long.