"The Lost Boys"

 
You'll never grow old, Michael. And you'll never die.

about "A Land More Kind Than Home" by Wiley Cash

Wiley Cash might know the kinds of people he writes about in his debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, but the voices of his first-person narrators sound affected. To channel small-town North Carolina folk, Wiley carpet bombs the narration's sixth grade-level speech with double negatives and other idiomatic devices. This impression, omnipresent from the outset, hampered my enjoying the read. Beyond that, the action is largely predictable and the characters flat. Three voices narrate the plot: a young boy, an old woman, and a late middle-aged sheriff.

A fundamentalist, snake-handling minister is the villain; the protagonists are individually overmatched against him. But together the confluence of choices people make leave the villain dead and the fallen redeemed. A Land More Kind Than Home isn't a bad book, necessarily. It's just immature.

about the airport Christmas Eve

from "I Never sang For My Father"

Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind toward some resolution which it may never find.

about how every song is a ballad

 
"Punk rock should mean freedom: liking and excepting anything that you like, playing whatever you want, as sloppy as you want, as long as it's good and it has passion."
  -Kurt Cobain

about "[sic]" by Joshua Cody

 
When he was about to receive his doctorate, doctors diagnosed noted young composer Joshua Cody with an aggressive cancer. The memoir-ish [sic] documents without form Cody's life and death struggle; hold the book in your hands, open to just about any page, and be treated to some trivia or personal revelation or philosophical reflection. This nonlinear form was well received by a lot of critics. Not all readers will agree.

I recognize the stakes were profound and, for that, a reader can indulge his author; but Cody really challenged my limits. I got bored and lost interest in Cody's scrapbook of a memoir. The value of this book, for me, anyway, is that, if you're not into "reading" lately, you can keep this book around for a week or so and poke around in it as you wait for sleep.

How can I write this about a memoir written by a dying man? I wait for sleep. Not everyone else does.

about being recognized

A lot of super hero movies have hit the screens in the last 12 years or so. Most of these super hero actors will be defined by these roles from here on out, especially among younger generations, and the actors will probably never be in a film that sells more tickets.

about being without you

(posts) Meshuggah's "Dancers To A Discordant System"

something about "The Birth of the Clinic" by Michel Foucault

In The Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault mines late 18th and early 19th century changes in medical practice (this, significantly, is around the time of the American and French Revolutions, following on the heels of the Enlightenment). These changes shaped modern medicine.

The discourse on human rights inspired by these revolutions led to an overall concern with society and health; and the move toward egalitarianism pushed physicians (and teaching physicians) out of the the aristocracy and reassigned them to general society.

The new imaginings of hard science dictated that we let truths reveal themselves to us. In The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault feels out what he calls the medical gaze--a way of seeing in which the physician allows the disease to reveal its own truth. The human body gives off signs, and the physician uses his knowledge and observations of the body to translate the reality of the disease.

The physician talks to the patient, observes him, examines him, orders tests and whatnot. Mysticism is abandoned for a discussion of the body; the physician relies less on bookish medical wisdom and instead reads the body. The physician's eye sees in space symptoms and physical signs.

The physician’s observations affect the gaze; the gaze affects the physician. Doctors systematically describe diseases using medical jargon. The physician's power is now his experience rather than his status. The gaze has scientific credibility. And we've successfully achieved truth in spite of the doctor's status, not because of it. (So we think.)

Joey

Probably baby kangaroos shouldn't be called "joeys." Only an "Australian" would come up with that name.

(posts) Danzig's "Am I Demon"

about relative success

You're saved if your father takes no interest in you. You're ruined if you wish he had.

about "St. George and the Godfather" by Norman Mailer

St. George and the Godfather unleashes Norman Mailer's critical mind on the characters participating in the 1972 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. That year, the Democrats nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern, and the Republicans took President Richard M. Nixon.

Mailer describes a stiflingly boring political season, especially when compared to the Presidential races of the previous decade. He indulges his moods in this tract, veering from righteously indignant to contemplative, and all the while he keeps on his mind the ongoing, escalated bombings in South Asia. Mailer is an American original whose complicated, unconventional views can't be duplicated, even though the problems of politics and culture he describes repeat themselves over and over.

something about maturity and civilization

Molly Lambert at ESPN's more-than-sports site Grantland wrote a good article about the misogyny and enduring immaturity of hip hop musician and rap artist Eminem. She opens with a question: "What if maturity is a myth? It’s a question that plagues a lot of people as they get older and find that, while they may change physically, their brains feel exactly the same."

Though not the end of the article, her conclusion is this: "The really scary thing is that many men don’t grow up. They continue to take out their insecurities on those who are more vulnerable, physically or culturally."

This investigation of the question of maturity and the elusive (or ephemeral) nature of maturity is equally applicable to the concept of civilization, or being civilized.

about this symphony

The end wasn't satisfying. But there were parts in the middle that I enjoyed very much.















Note:

• "Music is life and, like it, inextinguishable."
• And only this symphony.

nothing (inf.)

I missed the exit and ended up having to loop around the collision course.

about "Travels in Siberia" Ian Frazier

Ian Frazier, humor contributor to The New Yorker, developed a Russia fetish traveling there and, in 2010, published Travels in Siberia. This hefty travel log relays all kinds of details about Frazier's experiences with his guides, with locals, the climate, terrain, and culture. As made clear by the title, this book focuses on his times in Siberia, the massive symbol that accounts for the bulk of Russian territory (about three quarters of it). The travel-log part that makes for most of the book plodded aimlessly, and the narrative's pace stalled; the best parts relate some fascinating history lessons.

"Into the Atmosphere" by Dusted

Karl Marx