Now reading...

[Chrome]

JohnJ: Wasn't it Murakami who wrote "The Wind-up Bird Chronicles"? That was a pretty incredible book, I highly recommend it.

If you're interested in Japanese authors/books, I can also point you toward Kenzaburo Oe's "Nip the Buds, Shoot the Children" about a group of kids trying to survive in post-WWII rural Japan, although it's not really a "war" book.

[Dr. Rat]

eric: so the "Reader's Manifesto" rears its ugly head ...

Try as I might, I've never been able to get all the way through that. To be honest, that might have to do with the fact that I loved reading Delillo when I was younger and still consider "White Noise" to be fantastic.

On the other hand, after being on this board for a couple of months, it was fascinating to revisit the manifesto because it parallels some of the discussions we have here regarding the value/quality of different types of jazz.

Can you imagine posting a similar "Jazz Listener's Manifesto" here?!?!

On the Listeners' Manefesto: Now you're scaring me!

He's definitely got his opinions, which is cool. I think his recommendations of old neglected books are pretty spot on (I read Samarra and another of his recs, to my profit).

On DeLillo-- well, it may be because I am deeply contrarian and everybody my age seems to think he's God, but I've never really been able to appreciate him. I guess I just don't think he's half so clever as he thinks he is. I thought, for instance, his Hitler studies joke was on the one hand dreadfully obvious and on the other hand misleading as to what makes academia tick.

I think my disappointment may be that DeLillo doesn't really have any critical distance on academia. His satiric edge is dull, he makes relatively light intellectual demands, his critique is ultimately reassuring to those involved in publicly financed intellection, and that, for me, explains a lot of his popularity.

I find myself agreeing with the manefesto's critique of the opening scene in White Noise, for instance, and, well, I kind of said "yeah, right" when Dale Peck trashed him in passing. (I admit it!) Though I have to say, in spite of my agreement with many of his opinions, I do find Peck's manner gets tiresome pretty quickly.

--eric

[Chrome]

I think reading "White Noise" when it first came out made some of the difference for me ... a lot of it is, obviously, very subjective and I was really into what I call the "Vintage Contemporary" mode back then.

In case it was before your time, Vintage was putting out trade paperbacks with edgy graphics, etc., and all having a kind of similar "feel" ... kind of like the BN "sound" ... I can remember Denis Johnson's "Angels," Steve Erickson stuff, the Barthelmes, Raymond Carver, etc.

Anyway, I don't think Vintage published Delillo, but I always considered him part of that wave of at-the-time new writers I was reading in my early years out of college.

I read Dellilo's more recent "Cosmopolis," and I have to admit it was a loser.

[Muskrat Ramble]

Started rereading Neil Gaiman's Good Omens this morning. I haven't read this since it came out about ten years ago. It'll be interesting to see if my fond memories of it are due to it's writing or my "comic geek" love of Gaman's work back then...

Check out Alan Moore's classic V for Vendetta. It's been a while since I've reread that one--I wonder about my fond memories of it, too

Edited February 20, 2004 by Muskrat Ramble

[king ubu]

Reading some Joseph Roth.

Always some stuff for university to be read: couple of those fantastic and extremely intriguing letters Kafka wrote to Felice Bauer.

ubu

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

[Christiern]

Used to work for VOA, but I spent much more time broadcasting on truly free radio!

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

Chris, who was the VOA jazz man who spun discs for decades and had a huge (tens-of-millions) following throughout the world yet was virtually unknown in the U.S.? He died 5 or 6 years ago....maybe longer.

[Dmitry]

Chris, who was the VOA jazz man who spun discs for decades and had a huge (tens-of-millions) following throughout the world yet was virtually unknown in the U.S.? He died 5 or 6 years ago....maybe longer.

Willis Conover

He taught more people about jazz than anyone else. Save for Pops maybe.

[Christiern]

I got to know Willis, although not through VOA--During the Eisenhower years, I did news broadcasts in Danish and Icelandic from the New York studios (on West 57th Street--the Fisk Building) and didn't meet him until much later. He was a nice guy, altough somewhat stuck in a time warp.

[Dmitry]

Hew was a pretty good writer. I have read his liner notes on a few records and they're always witty and very-well written.

Didn't I read somewhere that Frank Kofsky and he have an altercation in the press sometime in the 60s?

Do you know what that was about? The communist and the VOA jazz director. 'nuff said.

Edited February 6, 2004 by Dmitry

[Christiern]

Never heard about that one, but I have no doubt of its veracity--Kofsky was easy to get into an altercation with, and I speak from personal experience.

[brownie]

Chris, who was the VOA jazz man who spun discs for decades and had a huge (tens-of-millions) following throughout the world yet was virtually unknown in the U.S.? He died 5 or 6 years ago....maybe longer.

Willis Conover

He taught more people about jazz than anyone else. Save for Pops maybe.

I grew up on Willis Conover's nightly broadcasts. Tried to catch as many as I could in the '50s. The VOA broadcasts were relayed from Germany on long-wave and the sound used to disappear every two or three minutes. The sound on the new BN 'Miles Davis in 1951' is high fidelity compared to what we could catch in these pre-FM times.

But Conover always played a great selection from the new albums that came up at the time and were mostly unavailable to most of us.

He died in 1996.

[Muskrat Ramble]

Appropriate for a discussion of Conover in a book thread:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/study/bios/atlastcsp.htm (For those who don't know, Lovecraft was America's greatest horror/SF/fantasy writer after Poe.)

[BruceH]

Now reading: "Jersey Diners" by Peter Genovese. Yum.

[Big Al]

Shameless Exploitation in the Pursuit of the Common Good by Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner. It's about the history of the "Newman's Own" line of products, and is funny as hell!

Also just started Never Mind the Pollacks. Only through about three pages or so, but this one is also cracking me up!

[patricia]

I was going through my old books the other day, that I fell heir to when my mother died. Along with tons of F. Marion Crawford, A.E.W Mason and Sax Rohmer and three books of poetry, I found the companion to the family bible, when I was growing up. I say companion, because it's bound the same way, in leather and always was next to the Bible on the shelf. Because of my mother's exacting rules for book-use, these are all immaculate, even the ones printed in the 1880's. I can hear her telling me not to turn down the corners, or turn them on their faces, instead use a bookmark. As I go through them, I occasonally find a piece of paper, or an old photograph, marking a place to be gone back to. Wow.

In any case, the title of this book is "Lives Of The Saints" and it's a collection of bios of the R.C. saints, not alphabetical, but from the first century A.D. on to the 1950's.

I would estimate that about 85-90% of these people were martyrs. I often wonder how many of us would have held onto our faith under the conditions and torture that these people went through. Holy man!!!

This was published in 1953 and the introduction was written by Thomas Plassmann.

Great, full-colour illustrations, with the very first one of St. Michael vanquishing Satan. The caption reads, "St Michael, as one of the Archangels, is always reppresented with wings and in armor. Often he is shown with a pair of scales, representative of his function in weighing souls."

I decided that I would start at the beginning, which I have never done and wade through the whole shebang.

I used to skim through, as a kid and look at the pictures, which were worse than horror comics in their full-colour illustrations of martyrdom. I had only read the bio of my own baptismal saint, St Theresa and that of St Agnes, who is always pictured holding a lamb in her arms. Interesting reading now though.

Did you know that St. Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians??

Edited February 12, 2004 by patricia

[ghost of miles]

Still haven't finished THE BIG TOMORROW, but seriously thinking about giving this new one a go, if I can find the time, especially as it's written by a semi-reputable historian:

[BruceH]

Just started The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. Don't know if I'll finish it, but SO far it's not hard to understand.

[paul secor]

I spent an hour or so this afternoon letting my eyes feast on two books of drawings that I received as Christmas presents:

The New Yorker Book of Baseball Cartoons. Highly recommended to all baseball fans.

The World According to Sempe. One of my favorite artists.

Edited February 18, 2004 by paul secor

[Matthew]

Had to go out of town for a couple of days, so I brought a book that I hadn't read in a long while: William Carlos Williams Spring and All. What an amazing book of poetry and prose it is! Sometimes I forget how new and radical the writers in the 1920's really were. I've been becoming very interested in the Advant-garde, its history, and also, A/V in modern jazz. Just a very exciting topic, and Spring and All has to be the clarian call for, not just the American A/V, but for all American artists. Glad I took it, even if I did have to suffer through boring meetings.

[Dr. Rat]

I was going through my old books the other day, that I fell heir to when my mother died. Along with tons of F. Marion Crawford, A.E.W Mason and Sax Rohmer and three books of poetry, I found the companion to the family bible, when I was growing up. I say companion, because it's bound the same way, in leather and always was next to the Bible on the shelf. Because of my mother's exacting rules for book-use, these are all immaculate, even the ones printed in the 1880's. I can hear her telling me not to turn down the corners, or turn them on their faces, instead use a bookmark. As I go through them, I occasonally find a piece of paper, or an old photograph, marking a place to be gone back to. Wow.

In any case, the title of this book is "Lives Of The Saints" and it's a collection of bios of the R.C. saints, not alphabetical, but from the first century A.D. on to the 1950's.

I would estimate that about 85-90% of these people were martyrs. I often wonder how many of us would have held onto our faith under the conditions and torture that these people went through. Holy man!!!

This was published in 1953 and the introduction was written by Thomas Plassmann.

Great, full-colour illustrations, with the very first one of St. Michael vanquishing Satan. The caption reads, "St Michael, as one of the Archangels, is always reppresented with wings and in armor. Often he is shown with a pair of scales, representative of his function in weighing souls."

I decided that I would start at the beginning, which I have never done and wade through the whole shebang.

I used to skim through, as a kid and look at the pictures, which were worse than horror comics in their full-colour illustrations of martyrdom. I had only read the bio of my own baptismal saint, St Theresa and that of St Agnes, who is always pictured holding a lamb in her arms. Interesting reading now though.

Did you know that St. Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians??

Have you read any Robertson Davies (my favorite Canadian author)?

He has a book about a guy who researches and writes "Lives of the Saints" sort of stuff--part of his Deptford triology which I recommend very highly.

--eric

[Chrome]

Just finished a John Updike story collection ... "The Music School." I had forgotten what an incredible writer he can be.

[Dr. Rat]

Reading this now. It's kind of 50s-ish, but has lots of good things to say about small towns, art & music, and can be very funny.

The small town thing being important for me having grown up and spent all my life in big cities and now living in a city that barely qualifies as such.

Small town Canada circa 1952 bears a lot of similarities to my current home.

--eric

[ghost of miles]

Just read Michael Tomasky's article in the New York Review of Books on the new La Guardia biography; he basically said it's OK but that the best La Guardia biography is Alyn Brodsky's 1989 bio THE GREAT MAYOR: FIORELLO LA GUARDIA AND THE MAKING OF MODERN NEW YORK CITY, 1933-1945. So I've checked it out of the library and hope to start it in another hour or two.