The Silverites!

Morning Blast #2

Met Carbone for lunch and at once the meal deteriorated into name calling and hurt feelings. Hack, poser, pansy,etc. Once the plates and little sake cups started flying, they threw us out of B Lounge and the fracas spilled out onto Pennsylvania Avenue. I slammed a newspaper box onto his back and that seemed to be the final straw. I left him in the soft mix of rain and snow, crawling towards York Road in hopes of making it to his car before the pain was too great to move. We've been banned from B Lounge for now. I think we'll have lunch at Souris' next week.

Morning Blast #1

I didn't believe for one minute that this guy had seen the rat we were now down on our hands and knees looking for. Not that this guy hadn't seen his share of schnauzer-sized rats, working down here, but right now he's just using a bullshit distraction and I'm playing along with it because I don't know what else to do.

I shine my light down behind the cars and see nothing but some old kids' toys, broken and scattered among the trash. I haven't seen any sign of an actual kid in the four hours I've been on this block today, but that doesn't mean anything. Kids make themselves scarce when I come around just like everybody else does.

I'm not a cop. Let me get that straight right off.

Year-end Round-up

I've been neglecting things here for quite a while. Here's the stuff I've been reading since the last time I mentioned the stuff I've been reading:

Lush Life by Richard Price--I think Price is the current master of crime fiction in the U.S. Lush Life touches on all facets of life on the Lower East Side with the best dialogue being written today.

Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music by Greg Kot--Great explanation of the current state of the music business and how we got here. It's mostly stuff you already knew about if you follow the scene closely, but Kot puts it all together and adds some good inside info.

Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball--An epistolary novel that follows a man's descent into depression and suicide by recounting letters he writes to everyone he's ever known in his last days. Some are very effective, ranging between humor and pathos, while some fall flat and feel a bit too forced. One of those books that I thought I would like more than I did.

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby--I generally like Hornby's books, but this one felt like he should have gone right to the screenplay and skipped the novel altogether. And it's a movie I don't think I'd pay to see.

Invisible by Paul Auster--I liked Auster's early novels, then I grew tired of his lazy style. I read somewhere that Invisible was a return to form. It wasn't.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker--Probably my favorite novel that I've read this year. Baker's story of a poet trying to write the introduction to a volume of rhyming poetry and relating a history of poetry in the process. It's got all the writing you love if you love Nicholson Baker and if you don't, you should.

Jernigan by David Gates--The relentless downward spiral of an alcoholic widower trying to raise his teenage son and failing miserably at everything. Funny, bitter, brutal and not a word out of place. I'm now a David Gates fan.

Black Dogs by Ian McEwan--The narrator recounts the story of his in-laws marriage against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The well-crafted writing we expect from McEwan with the big payoff at the end. The only problem for me was knowing the payoff was going to be there and feeling like the rest of the novel was like wading through the shallows to get to the big waves.

Grumble on the Rumpus

Rumpus.net accepted my write up on Carpenter's Gothic for their "Last Book You Loved" series. Check it out here.

Our Noise

Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small is a must for indie rock fans. Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance started Merge Records back in the late eighties to release 7" singles of their band, Superchunk, and other bands from the Chapel Hill scene. The label grew with the popularity of bands like Spoon, Arcade Fire, Neutral Milk Hotel and The Magnetic Fields. John Cook conducted interviews with McCaughan and Ballance and numerous musicians and locals from the Chapel Hill scene to put together this interesting peek into the world of indie music. Great photos and stories throughout--especially if you were a Superchunk fan back in the day. No Pocky for Kitty was a staple in six-disc cd changer and I had a crush on Laura Ballance, just like every other indie rock fanboy. For a long time, though, I thought she was the one singing in that thin, raspy voice buried in the mix.

Carpenter's Gothic

William Gaddis is one of those writers I've been hearing about for years, a writer's writer of difficult but rewarding fiction, a post-modern master. The Recognitions is considered his masterpiece, but it's a huge, intimidating book, so I picked up Carpenter's Gothic not long ago with no idea what to expect.

The story involves a married couple, Paul and Elizabeth, renting a house (the Carpenter's Gothic of the title) from a mysterious divorced geologist. Paul, who once ran some shady business dealings for Elizabeth's late father, is trying to get started as the media consultant for a southern evangelist while Elizabeth wanders and frets around the house. The action never leaves the house and mainly follows Elizabeth as other characters come and go. Gaddis' genius (for me) is in the dialogue. Ninety percent of the writing is dialogue--the fragmented, digressive speech of a hyperkinetic group of characters. Characters ramble on for paragraphs, changing direction in mid-sentence, jumping to phone conversations without warning and occasionally Gaddis will even insert a stage direction without separation into the midst of a chunk of dialogue.

And it all works brilliantly. Gaddis has captured the feverish way people talk to each other, especially those closest to us who don't ever seem to require context. He also manages to touch on subjects like Christianity, colonialism (and the relationship between the two), sexuality, politics--all without ever leaving the confines of the carpenter gothic house in suburban New York.