something about “Working,” a book by Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel (1912–2008) was an American historian, broadcaster, and writer; in 1974, he published Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, a nonfiction book that—true to its title—catalogs many, many people of various walks of life talking about their work. During his lifetime, Terkel produced a few works based on his wonderings about the lives of the strangers you pass every day.

This is probably an okay or even fine book, but I grew annoyed by the too-on-the-nose “regular guy” voices. It was like, “I’m what you call a [job title]. Our system isn’t perfect. But we make do. The other day, we were cranking the [name of something]. I’m thinking, ‘I can’t believe this. What are we doing over here?’ Then I get $50, which made me feel great! So that’s the deal.” Five hundred pages of this.

Note: For reasons I do not understand and have not bothered to look into, I associate Terkel with Chicago baseball.

 

a review of a noise rock/mathcore band

Lower Automation’s newest album, Strobe Light Shadow Play, is an experimental, dissonant mishmash of noise rock, hardcore, and mathcore. The music has such a sense of motion, of nervous energy, sounds can seem like randomness overtaking the system. The band tests and tries things, and the noise is barely contained—but it is not chaos. “It’s the most experimental and noisiest release we’ve ever put out, but also probably the most melodic,” the band says.

Among my favorite songs is “Information Entrepreneurs and Their Lipsynching Choirs,” which opens with a piercing, shaky, manic vocal. At 15 seconds, the buzzy bass buzzes into a punchy dance beat while the distorted echo- and reverb-tweaked guitar bounces off the walls. Drums fritter and snap out.

“Acolytic” opens with little discordant riff that features a subtle lift at the end of each series of strokes. The bass rumbles and yawns, and the drums motion frantically and then pause and punctuate a desperately prayerful vocal. The energy grows, but then, at 1:25, the band pulls back into a bad-attitude bass riff, the drum marking time more evenly while the guitar still noisily sparks off around the room. The album captures some very good moments, and this song is a great example.

Another exciting moment is the what-the-hell-is this? opening to “End Scene”–a fast-picking classical guitar with softer emotive singing. This gives way to noisy, raw hardcore—the guitar is nuts. At 1 minute, cello strings sift from behind bass-drum hits before the song dives back into the fray.

The songs are short, hovering around 2 minutes each, and sound a little like The Locust with bits of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Botch, and At the Drive-in. Strobe Light Shadow Play will be released November 22nd via Zegema Beach Records. Lower Automation, a trio from Chicago, has two previous releases—an EP titled Maps from 2016 and a self-titled full-length from 2021.

something about "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics" by David Axelrod

David Axelrod emerged on the national political scene as Barack Obama's invaluable strategist during the 2008 campaign. After the campaign, Axelrod stayed on as Obama's senior advisor for half of the first term. He returned to the campaign trail for Obama in 2012. While these events, covered in Axelrod's memoir, Believer, are momentous, I enjoyed the beginning of Axelrod's story most of all.

When he was a child, the future strategist, born in New York City, witnessed a John F. Kennedy campaign speech. Axelrod cites that moment as a formative experience. He had caught and internalized the political optimism of the day. He recalls the experience with undiminished sincerity.

I also enjoyed his brief recount of Chicago's modern political history. This memoir also offers a little of the guilty pleasure of gossipy criticism, such as when Axelrod criticizes Elizabeth Edwards for micromanaging the 2004 presidential campaign of her husband, John.

Axelrod went to college in Chicago, then started as a journalist investigating Chicago politics and corruption. He had his own column in a city paper by age 18. Axelrod was friends with Obama long before they campaigned together, both having built careers out of Chicago politics.
 
Axelrod keeps the narrative moving. He could have written a whole book on just the first week in the White House, with the whole country groaning under the weight of the the financial crisis. But Axelrod gives those monumental days only the standard highlight reel. His writing is crisp, clever, and often funny. His forty-year career goes by too fast at times. He is an underrated and undervalued figure in our national politics. His enduring belief in the promise of America is precious.

something about "Dangling Man" by Saul Bellow

 
Our Dangling Man keeps a journal in which he agonizes over the gaps between his past and present selves. His encounters with people sound largely antagonistic.

The voice of the journal belongs to Joseph, a young man living in Chicago. At this moment in his life, Joseph is unemployed, and 1942 America is at war. Joseph's voice captures truths that are universal (or, at least national), temporal, and personal. Frustration over his compulsion to drill and drill himself for value taint Joseph's reflections. Although determined to unleash these thoughts, Joseph is an unwilling participant in a culture that increasingly casts every self in the lead role.

At the time of his writings, Joseph, Canadian by birth, has been waiting for word on his acceptance into the American army during World War II. He surrenders his personal freedom to end this suffering. He closes his journal with the words,

Hurray for regular hours!
And for the supervision of the spirit!
Long live regimentation!

Notes:
Dangling Man, written in 1944, is Saul Bellow's first published work. I thought Dangling Man had interesting moments, but I did not enjoy reading it.