Pete Lit

Harry, Excerpted

FoPL Mark Sarvas (oh, who am I kidding? he's friends of hundreds of litblogs) has a nice new piece, "The colour of Anna's coffin cushions", in the latest issue (theme: "Rage") of The Drawbridge. I strongly suspect this is an excerpt from his debut novel, Harry, Revised, which is getting strong notices from just about every literary outpost other than the most self-absorbed newspaper in New York.

Rumor has it that a copy of the book is making its way to my doorstep, possibly via an underpowered barge moving upriver against a heavy spring torrent. I'm really looking forward to reading this one, whenever it happens to get here.

Succumb to the Gaping Void

I've been enjoying Hugh McLeod's Gaping Void cartoons (all of them written on the back of business cards, often while imbibing in bars) for a while now, even though most of them are much more bitter, pissed-off and pessimistic than I generally am. But his latest, "live in paris", so perfectly nails the allure of Paris to American expatriate writers that I thought I'd link to it here, on this sort-of-literary blog of mine.

McCain has radical friends, too.

Barack Obama has had to repudiate his past associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former 60s radical Bill Ayers. Rightly so, given that Obama doesn't share either's radical, extremist views. But as Steve Chapman sharply points out in today's Chicago Tribune, the same has not been required of John McCain. As recently as November, McCain said this to G. Gordon Liddy, who has hosted a McCain fundraiser in the past and donated generously to McCain's campaign fund:

"I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family...It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

Mind you, this man that McCain so effusively admires is a convicted felon who: orchestrated the Watergate break-in which brought down the Nixon Administration, and has repeatedly said that the only thing he regretted about Watergate wasn't his criminal act, but getting caught; advocated kidnapping anti-war activists to prevent them from disrupting the Republican National Convention; planned the murder of an hostile journalist; and advocated the killing of ATF agents who were in the act of serving their official duties.

There is little doubt that Liddy is a radical, and a belligerently unrepentant one. True, he's a radical on the right-wing end of the political spectrum, versus the left-leaning Ayers and Wright. But he's a radical all the same, one who is openly hostile to the Constitution and the rule of law. He's clearly an extremist. So why isn't John McCain expected to repudiate him, just like Obama has done with Ayers and Wright?

Like so many other issues, most of the mainstream media has given McCain a free pass on the subject of Liddy. Shame on them.

New bird in town

For the past week we've been enjoying watching a new visitor to our backyard. (Visitor for now and, I'm hoping, soon-to-be permanent resident.) Last Sunday morning I was gazing through our kitchen window when a flurry of motion caught my eye. I saw a bird I had never seen before, with striking cinnamon-colored feathers on its back. It was about the same size as a robin, and scurried around like a robin, so at first I assumed it was a juvenile of that species which had not yet attained its trademark red breast. But through binoculors I was struck by the sight of this bird's breast, which was marked by brown spots. So I consulted our bird book and quickly realized it wasn't a young robin at all, and finally decided that it had to be a brown thrasher. It's a truly beautiful bird, and has also been very fun to watch - it's very energetic and feisty (often at the expense of our robins), and while it spent the first few days rooting around in the soil for worms and bugs, it soon took a liking to the birdseed in the feeder.

Since I had never seen a brown thrasher around here, I assumed this one was migrating and just passing through, and would be gone soon. But a week has now passed, and the bird is still here. And just last night, we saw a second brown thrasher in the yard, so we're crossing our fingers that this is a mating pair that will make our backyard their home. I'm certainly going to keep that feeder filled as an enticement to the two of them.

By the way, that photo above isn't mine, but a stock photo from Wikipedia (full-sized image here) that gives a much better up-close look than I could take on my own.

Song of the Week: Crash Test Dummies

Crash Test Dummies: Superman's Song

Crash Test Dummies are best known for their one hit, "MMM MMM MMM MMM", but while I only know of two other songs of theirs, both are far superior to their hit: a cover of the Replacements' "Androgynous", and this ode to the Man of Steel. While the obvious highlight of the song is the impossibly deep voice of frontman Brad Roberts, the lyrics are quite sharp as well:

Tarzan wasn't a ladies' man
He'd just come along and scoop 'em up under his arm
Like that, quick as a cat in the jungle
But Clark Kent now there was a real gent
He would not be caught sittin' around in no
Junglescape, dumb as an ape doing nothing

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job
Even though he could have smashed through any bank
In the United States, he had the strength, but he would not
Folks said his family were all dead
Their planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself
To carry on, forget Krypton, and keep going

Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes
But he could hardly string together four words: "I Tarzan, You Jane. "

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes
I'll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back
On man, join Tarzan in the forest
But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes
In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through
And nothing to do but go on home

Having only minimal familiarity with the band, I hadn't thought of Crash Test Dummies in years. But recently I picked up the first two issues of Mark Russell's Superman Stories, a very funny and thought-provoking zine which imagines the everyday life of Superman. Sure, he has superpowers, but he has plenty of human weaknesses too - a violent temper, emotional impenetrability, boredom and much more. I strongly encourage you to give Russell a read.

And pondering the less-than-super traits of Superman that Russell writes about couldn't help but remind me of this wonderful song. I hope you enjoy both.

Open Book

There's a nice story in today's New York Times on Open Book, the literary arts center in Minneapolis which houses the Loft Literary Center, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Milkweed Editions, and which has anchored the revitalization of its neighborhood. With old-fashioned, low-tech, supposedly-irrelevant-in-the-fast-paced-modern-age books. Decaying Rust Belt cities, please take note.

"...eolean harps in which the wind sings..."

Hjalmar Söderberg's 1905 novel Doctor Glas revolves around the inner thoughts of a middle-aged Stockholm doctor who has never truly lived life. Though professionally successful, he has all but sat on the margins of life, with no lovers or even friends, never truly connecting with humanity and in fact mostly showing disdain for others. Yet even as he recognizes this distance and seems to revel in it, he still envies artists who are able to absorb the world into themselves, reflect and interpret their thoughts for the public, even if by doing so they sacrifice their free will and become servants of their muse.

I couldn't become a poet. I see nothing that others haven't already seen and given shape and form. I know a number of writers and artists - strange creatures, in my opinion. They have no will of their own, or if they do, their actions contradict it. They're merely eyes and ears and hands. But I envy them. Not that I would give up my will in exchange for their visions, but I might wish I had their eyes and ears in addition. Sometimes when I see one of them sitting quietly, absently, staring out into space, I think to myself: perhaps at this very moment he sees something no one has seen before, something he will soon compels a thousand others to see, among them me. I don't understand what the youngest of them produce - not yet - but I know and predict that once they are acknowledged and famous, I, too, will understand and admire them...And the poets themselves - do they really dictate the laws of time? Lord knows, though I hardly think they seem capable of it. Instead it seems more likely they are instruments that time plays on, eolean harps in which the wind sings. And what am I? Not even that. I have no eyes of my own...I think of Hans Christian Andersen and his tale of the shadow, and it seems to me that I myself am the shadow who wished to become a man.

Söderberg was a true artist, so in this instance it can hardly be said that the writer was using his narrator as a mouthpiece. Instead, Söderberg was clearly the perceptive aesthete that Doctor Glas so envied. But elsewhere in this mesmerizing book I can't help but hear the writer's opinions and beliefs ringing through, loud and clear.

Page 123 Meme - Never Come Morning

Marshall Zeringue at Campaign for the American Reader has tagged with the Page 123 Meme, which requires the following:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Right now I'm reading Nelson Algren's novel Never Come Morning. (An interesting coincidence, given the fact that I once wrote a Page 69 essay for Marshall on Algren's The Man With the Golden Arm.) In doing this meme, I'm going to take a slight liberty. The last two of the "three sentences" are fragments - the first just an adjective and a noun, the second a proper name (which is followed by four more proper names and then another fragment). The speaker of this passage is reading from a list, and so Algren's structure is faithful to normal human speaking patterns (Algren had a great ear for human dialogue) rather than standard written-word conventions. Because stopping after the third "sentence" (which isn't really a sentence at all) wouldn't make much sense, I've continued on to present the entire "phrase."

Page 123 of Never Come Morning involves one of Algren's favorite settings, the police interrogation. (Despite the fact that Algren wasn't a crime writer per se, many of his stories include scenes in interrogation rooms, police lineups and jail cells.) The protagonist, Lefty Bicek, has been arrested after a botched holdup in which the victim was accidentally shot. The interrogator, Captain Tenczara, couldn't really care less about the victim, but has instead hauled Lefty in to try to get him to implicate himself in a murder which Lefty did indeed commit. Lefty tries to downplay the holdup and shooting, implying that the victim was only slightly wounded and was an old man who didn't really matter anyway. After stringing Lefty along for a while, the Captain bluntly utters the following, implying that the victim was killed and was also a family man:

"Bullet through the groin - zip," he added, his words coming flat and unempathetic, reading from the charge sheet without understanding. "Five children. Stella. Mary. Grosha. Wanda. Vincent. All underage."

But the cagey Lefty doesn't take the bait, and doesn't let this revelation shock him into confessing to the more serious crime. Blunt, simple and to the point - just like much of Algren's dialogue. Great stuff.

That said, I'm now tagging Ben, Nick, Jason, Brandon and Richard, plus the ever-lovely Julie. You've been memed!

The Humo(u)r of Hunger

Chris Killen is my new hero - a fellow traveler who also appreciates the great humor in Knut Hamsun's otherwise bleak Hunger.

I think comedy often comes from dark places, and I think there's a very fine line between something being funny and something being horrible.

I've read Hunger from many different angles during the past twenty-plus years, humor being just one of them. The fact that the book works so perfectly on so many levels - including being funny and bleak at the same time - is one reason it's still the greatest book I've ever read.

(Via Dogmatika.)

Replacements Reissued!

Every defunct band seems to be getting the reissue treatment these days, including the great Replacements, whose first four records (Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash; The Replacements Stink; Hootenany; and Let It Be) have been re-released by the ever-wonderful Rhino Records. Pitchfork reviews all four here. Learning that each reissue includes bonus tracks brought a smile to my face, since it brought to mind the following gem from the 1989 edition of the Trouser Press Record Guide (remember that in 1989 the transition from vinyl to CD was still underway):

Although four Replacements albums are out on CD, not one of them includes a bonus track. Bastards.

With passages like that, it's no wonder I've revered that book for so many years. If for some inexplicable reason you've never heard Let It Be, then for heaven's sake snatch up this reissue as fast as humanly possible. Truly one of the greatest rock albums ever made.