The Daily Sabbatical

Calling a book the Gone with the Wind of ____(insert country or region here) is a grand way to insure that I will never read it. I have never read Gone with the Wind, of course, which might seem to make me hasty in my attitudes, but I’d prefer to think that I’m being charmingly consistent. Fortunately I started reading Lampedusa’s “The Leopard” before I heard the windy comparison, and so a new book has jumped onto my list of favorites. I’d put this book on the rather short list of must-reads, somewhere, probably, near Ford Maddox Ford’s “The Good Soldier.” And no need to fear if you don’t read Italian: the translator of my volume, one Archibald Colquhoun, has done an extraordinary job. (And a good thing too for Archie, because with a name like that there are only about three career paths one can hope for, and being a translator is one. ) The language is natural and fluent, preserving a sense of rhythm as well as simple descriptive beauty.

Lampedusa (1896-1957) was the scion of an aristocratic Sicilian family that had, over the years, suffered a decline and loss of means so that the prestige of name was little more than that. An avid reader, he didn’t turn his hand to writing until he was 59—yes, there is hope for us all. With no small effort, he cranked out The Leopard (il Gattopardo) just in time to see it summarily rejected by a couple of presses before dying of lung cancer in July of ‘57—perhaps being a late bloomer is not so great after all. It was published to acclaim the year after his death, however, and won the Strega prize in 1959. It is now considered a classic of Italian literature.

The Leopard is primarily the story of a Sicilian prince around the time of Italian unification (c.1860). Prince Fabrizio Salina, based loosely on Lampedusa’s great-grandfather, is “The Leopard” and he receives masterly depiction that is neither overly sympathetic nor particularly disaffected. Existing, as he does, at a time when the old order is being replaced by the new, he is led to reflect on himself, his neighbors, and his country, and despite the fact that the Prince (and the narrator, who is privy to his perspective) often occupies an elevated and detached viewpoint that invites condescension, he is able to come to terms with the role of himself and others in a rather impressive stoical fashion. Witness, for example, the following paragraph, describing a sort of epiphany after the Prince finds himself at a ball where he feels utterly disconnected and rather full of loathing for those around him.

The two young people drew away, other couples passed, less handsome, just as moving, each submerged in their passing blindness. Don Fabrizio felt his heart thaw; his disgust gave way to compassion for all these ephemeral beings out to enjoy the tiny ray of light granted them between two shades, before the cradle, after the last spasms. How could one inveigh against those sure to die? It would be as vile as those fish vendors insulting the condemned in the Piazza del Mercato sixty years before. Even the female monkeys on the poufs, even those old boobies of friends were poor wretches, condemned and touching as the cattle lowing through the city streets at night on their way to the slaughter-house; to the ears of each of them would one day come that tinkle he had heard three hours before behind San Dominico. Nothing could be decently hated except eternity.

While this passage is more philosophical than most in the novel, it is indicative of the bonding between criticism and acceptance, distance and involvement that is one of the great successes of this book.

Reading The Leopard, I found myself often thinking of two of my favorites: Nabokov and Cervantes. Lampedusa has a sense of comedy that resembles each of those greats in different ways. While he doesn’t revel in the linguistic acrobatics in the manner of VN, he does use some of the same wry tricks. One of my favorites is his use of “narrative spoilers,” as when talking about a zealous young soldier one mentions off-handedly, as if tossing off just another descriptive clause, “all of this would be of great relish to his family when they watched him being lowered into the frozen ground a year later.” From Cervantes—explicitly, actually—Lampedusa replicates the Panza/Quixote repartee in depicting the prince’s relationship to the tenants of his land and his upstart neighbors. As in DQ one sees the absurdity and the wisdom of both parties in the process, and one’s laugh is both sincere and respectful of their plight.

This is already damn long for a post, so no need to go on. It can simply be said that I loved this book, will read it again, and will no doubt push it on my friends with the enthusiasm of a Mormon at the doorbell.

Our house, located on a street of identical houses, has finally gone on the market. The floors are polished, the nicks and dents are sanded and painted, and the windows pass a cursory glance for translucent. There are new spruce trees, which if not thriving are managing, fresh periwinkles dangling in plastic pots, and recently mown St. Augustine that only slightly outpaces the voracious crabgrass. The damn place looks better than it ever has, and it was a severe pain in the ass to get it that way.

Yesterday was the first day on the market, and we had a showing. That’s a good sign, I suppose, probably a result of our recession-days pricing scheme. We were still missing a few serifs here and there, but we were confident that the house would show well. Most of the neighboring houses, while identical on the outside, are Brady Bunch time capsules on the inside. These are the interiors that would have surrounded Marsha and Greg had they been pushed from the palace with an incestuous love-child in tow: wood paneling, wall-to-wall crimson carpeting, and a knick-knack shelf for all those pewter figurines that stand proxy for dreams. In our house, on the other hand, the paneling was the first to go—it was a testosterone boost to rip it out with a clawhammer, actually, making me feel like a man instead of a philosopher. (Using the word “clawhammer” has the same effect, actually, but putting the word in quotes to signal that I am mentioning the word instead of using it pushes the testosterone levels back down to nerd-level.) The color scheme actually lets one believe one is not suffocating despite the fact that the suburbs still await outside the front door. Best of all is a back patio, where I can speed read philosophy of religion in preparation for the dialogue on god Torin Alter and I will write later in the summer.

Despite my hopes, however, there is some sign that the showing went less than well. To begin with, Lanie ran into the prospective buyers as she was leaving the house, so any appearance that the house was occupied by normal Texans was loss. Also, it appears I left my overused shoes filling the closet with sockless odors. And perhaps worst of all, one of the ferns on the back porch apparently fell from the eaves pulling the hook out of the wood and making the house appear one step away from a tumbling house of cards. So, I suspect we’ll have the house on the market for more than a week. That’s fine: it’s fun to follow cats around the house with a lint brush. Just dandy.

Sometimes you hear an album, learn a bit about the artist, and simply know that you will buy everything that artist has ever done. This is what has happened with Kan Mikami. I first heard songs from the Japanese folk legend on a serendipitous download, I bought his album “I’m the Only One Around” at a dear price on import, and I’m suddenly in love.
Facts about Mikami are a little difficult to discover if Japanese isn’t in your repertoire, as it certainly isn’t in mine, but he was apparently a central part of the 1970s folk revival in Japan, and after apparently laying low in the 80s he reappeared on the PSF label and has been recording and performing his “Japanese Blues” pretty much continuously ever since.
Mikami sings and plays guitar, and does both with a harsh, somewhat angst ridden tone. Though his lyrics are, of course, perfectly hidden to me without a translation, there is a bleakness and desperation conveyed by his plaintive yowling that makes the actual semantics unnecessary. (As it happens, the translations I have found confirm that his themes match his musical mood. Lonely bedsheets, forlorn prostitutes, and more than a modicum of angry sentiment are among the bases covered.) It is an existentialist folk, to be sure, and it is the perfect soundrack for a darkstreet. Comparisons don’t come easily, so listen to a couple of tracks instead. The first is from his 1989 album “I’m the only one…” The repetitive guitar plucks here just kill me: they’re like rain falling over the scene of urban decline he’s describing. The second track comes from a live performance that, I think, is more recent and is collected on a disc called “Igi Nashi!” There’s some gritty guitar work here and some of his more idiosyncratic vocal contortions. I have no idea what he’s singing about, but it doesn’t matter.
The only place I’ve been able to find his stuff is at Forced Exposure Mailorder and it is quite expensive, but it’s also quite worth it.


InFront of Hachiki.mp3
Narayamabushi.mp3

Last night, to celebrate the fact that my house in Garland is finally on the market (Want a house in the suburb famous for being the setting of King of the Hill? Now’s your chance! Mention this blog and get a special deal!) I had friends over to watch 1970 cult classic “El Topo.” Filmed by (and starring) Alejandro Jodorowski, El Topo is the film that gave rise to the midnight movies phenomenon, and was reportedly John Lennon’s favorite movie. El Topo is a spaghetti western gone mad. The movie starts with El Topo riding in the desert with his naked son saddled behind him and a black parasol held above. The first lines of the movie come when the man and boy dismount and the boy is told “Today you are seven years old. Now you are a man. Bury your first toy and your mother’s picture.” After submerging the picture and a teddybear, the boy follows El Topo to experience atrocities and absurdities that no man should have to experience.
Although quite disjointed, the movie contains many of the favored thematic tropes of the great Westerns, as well as more than a few from the Saturday Morning Kung Fu films. Here we have a revenge story, a la Josey Wales, a “save the village” tale, a la Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven, and an “outdraw the four masters story” a la, I don’t know, Game of Death? Oh, and lest I forget, all of this with a nice peppering of lesbian whip fights, dwarf love, and old women in bustiers. (There’s some blood too.)
Heavy with Catholic symbolism and twisted interpretations of Eastern Philosophy, El Topo is packed to the seams. The seams burst, to be sure, but that’s just part of the fun. Visually the movie is a stunner–the landscapes are outstanding and the color leaps off the screen. If you can, you should probably see this on the big screen, but unless you live in New York or LA, you probably never will so you’d better just rent it. As soon as possible. You might die tomorrow without ever seeing this bizarre film.

Radical Face’s (relatively) new album “Ghost” is one of the most under appreciated albums this year. The reviews out there haven’t been so hot, and I just don’t understand it. This CD spends as much time in my player nowadays as any I own.
Ghost is the project of Ben Cooper, former member of “Electric President,” and is is well situated on the nearly infallible label Morr Music. Cooper’s songs are, appropriately enough, haunting choirs with autumnal tones, floating over invigorating rhythms–sometimes in the form of Shinsy hand-claps, other times clippity percussion, and all usually undergirded by simple progressions on the guitar or piano. Though comparisons to the recently disappointing Albuquerque band are inevitable, I feel Radical Face feels more like a less happy, less hippy Grandaddy.
The music is strong, but the lyrics don’t disappoint either. Songs with a grand sonic architecture typically collapse when populated by bumbling words, but Cooper knows how to fill his spaces with interesting images that don’t get too pretentious or poetic, and that don’t sink to the simple or mundane. It’s good work all around. Ignore the lukewarm reviews. Listen to the mp3 and judge for yourself. I bought mine at Good Records, but if you can’t support a local record store, Amazon or Indietorrents will have it.

Welcome Home.mp3

After struggling through Henry James’ “Wings of the Dove,” with its tortured sentences that often sound like overly literal translations from German, I needed to read something with substantially more killin’.   Morgan’s debut novel, “Altered Carbon” certainly fit that bill–though not all the killin’ involves “real death.”

Let me explain.  AC is set in the twenty fifth century when bodies can be donned or disposed of like a spring wardrobe.  The key to this trick lies in the fact that in the future everyone has a little device–a “stack”–at the top of the spine that stores all of the memories and personality data for that individual.  As long as that little buddy doesn’t get destroyed, therefore, the data from the stack can be used to “resleeve” an individual in however many biological suits he or she pleases.  If the stack is destroyed, that is “real death” and tears flow.

There are, to be sure, some very interesting philosophical questions here regarding personal identity, and Morgan flirts with them without getting too heavy handed.  It is never really questioned whether or not stack-survival is real survival, and perhaps that’s ok.  In fact, it is as if everyone in this world–oh, except for the Catholics, who are still around and don’t allow stack “resuscitation”–accepts and has internalized a Parfitian concept of survival.  (If you’re not familiar with the excellent philosopher Derek Parfit, you should check him out.  He’s as smart as they come.)  I would consider having my students read Altered Carbon, actually, were it not for the rather hardcore sex and violence that at times led even me to wince.

Although he sometimes falls into formula, Morgan’s story is compelling stuff.  He’s really thought through the implications of his future, and he doesn’t outfit it with idle bells and whistles.  The issues about survival, for example, play a key role in the plot, figuring importantly into the motives and possible motives of the key characters.  Which brings me to the plot.  This is basically a hard-boiled detective story set in the future, and the key crime involves the “murder” of a very wealthy man who is several hundred years old.  The wealthy have an extra survival safety net: they periodically have their stack files beamed to a remote location, so if their stack is destroyed, they can always just replicate the data in a new one and resleeve into a new body.  The trick, of course, is that they won’t remember anything that happened between their last data-backup and the destruction of their stack.  So, you have the possibility of a guy who was murdered, but who is around to hire a private investigator to find his killer, whom he cannot identify since his backup self doesn’t have the data from the time of the murder.  Pretty cool device.  The plot gets a little confusing at times, and is perhaps more complex than it really needs to be, but it is a good read.  This is sci-fi noir firmly in the Philip K. Dick tradition, so if you like that guy, you’ll probably dig this.