Quick Hits: New Music

Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz

Out October 12^th, The Age of Adz is the long-awaited follow-up to Come on Feel the Illinoise. Word has it that Stevens traded folk influences and acoustic timbres for glitchy electronic rhythms. Typically, I am a fan of change because when an artist makes three albums in a row, they become Creed. I expect good things from the Age of Adz.

Junip – Fields

A band fronted by José González, a famed Swedish singer-songwriter of Argentine origins. In content and feel, Fields resembles the González’s collaboration with Zero 7. José’s trademark voice and nylon-stringed guitar mold particularly well with electronic tones.

The Walkmen – Lisbon

This New York band bears raw tonal qualities and well-crafted melodies. Lisbon is one part hipster music and one part catchy hooks. Every time I spin the record, it sounds better than the last time I listened.

Book Review: Lake Overturn

Lake Overturn: A Novel by Vestal McIntyre (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010. 443 pp)

Born and raised in Nampa, Idaho, Vestal McIntyre is an award winning novelist. He has twice won the Lambda Literary Award. In 2006, he received a Fellowship in Fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. McIntyre lives in both New York City and London.

Literary fiction takes many forms. Sometimes it takes the shape of social satire placed within a simple narrative, other times it takes the form of an author, self-aware of the words he or she places on the page, and even still, other times it takes the form of a complexly interwoven plot. Partly masterful and partly mundane, Vestal McIntyre's Lake Overturn follows the characters of a small town of Eula in rural Idaho. Even though the setting and characters in this book strikingly resemble Napoleon Dynamite, this book spends no time seeking to be a comedy. The foundational plot line upon which the narrative is built centers upon the frightening phenomenon occurring at Lake Nyos in Cameroon. At the lake, gas was released from the depths of the lake and suffocated every living animal around the lake. In the novel, two junior high boys attempt to study what would happen if the lake overturn phenomenon occurred in their small town.

Titled lake overturn, this phenomenon happens when deep lakes build up extremely concentrated levels of carbon dioxide. When the pressure becomes too much for the lake's surface to bear, carbon dioxide bubbles from the depths of the lake similarly to a shaken soda can. Correspondingly, McIntyre's novel builds through a complex narrative of multiple main characters before the pressure in each character’s life releases as the novel opens up toward its end. In different ways, each character builds through depth and quality until their inner demons expose themselves in fantastic fashion. One character struggles with his sexuality, one seeks to find redemption from her addictive tendencies, and another despairingly searches for biblical answers to her ever-present loneliness.

The masterful portions of the book follow from these complex characters. McIntyre flawlessly switches between characters as they enter the story. Multiple times, one character runs into another in a paragraph and the next paragraph picks up on the new character's narrative. In writing this way, the author creates a complex web of relationships that truly place the focus on a small town community.

However, McIntyre's focus on narrative diminishes his artistic observation. Throughout my reading of this book, I never paused on a paragraph reflecting on a powerful observation or a striking metaphor. In Lake Overturn, McIntyre writes a story with no flashy frills or philosophical underpinnings. Nevertheless, he writes a compelling story, one I would recommend for its unique characters.

Book Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcίa Márquez, translated by Gregory Rabassa (New York: Harper Perennial, 1967. 417 pp)

Gabriel Garcίa Márquez is a Colombian novelist whose notable books include Love in the Time of Cholera, The Autumn of the Patriarch, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, Márquez is considered one of the most significant authors of the Twentieth Century.

With a foundation in magical realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude follows the growth of the Buendίa family and the city of Macondo. Drawing from childhood stories, Márquez pens an extraordinary tale of love, death, and loneliness. The book begins with a foreboding sense of determinism when Márquez writes:

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendίa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice" (p. 1).

In fact, an impending sense of helplessness meanders through the book as the family expands with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. With each generation, the names of Aureliano, José Arcadio, and Remedios are recycled. There is a sense in which each person is merely an extension of a larger character. "There was no mystery," claims Márquez,

"in the heart of a Buendίa that was impenetrable for her because a century of cards and experience had taught her that the history of the family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle" (p. 396).

Just as each character blends with previous characters that have come and gone in the narrative, each lives and dies in resolute isolation. Whether through external circumstances or internal influences, each family member succumbs to a life of seclusion. For example, Márquez describes a character's despair, saying:

"Instead of going to the chestnut tree, Colonel Aureliano Buendίa also went to the street door and mingled with the bystanders who were watching the parade. He saw a woman dressed in gold sitting on the head of an elephant. He saw a sad dromedary. He saw a bear dressed like a Dutch girl keeping time to the music with a soup spoon and a pan. He saw the clowns doing cartwheels at the end of the parade and once more he saw the face of his miserable solitude when everything had passed by and there was nothing but the bright expanse of the street and the air full of flying ants with a few onlookers peering into the precipice of uncertainty. Then he went to the chestnut tree, thinking about the circus, and while he urinated he tried to keep on thinking about the circus, but he could no longer find the memory. He pulled his head in between his shoulders like a baby chick and remained motionless with his forehead against the trunk of the chestnut tree" (267).

Originally written in Spanish, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a difficult read. The sentences are long and the narrative does not follow a singular arc. However, the book brings harsh questions into focus. Are we free to choose the direction of our lives or have they been set in motion long before we were conscious of our choices? No matter how many friends and loved ones orbit our lives, are we actually alone? I encourage you to pick up Marquez's masterpiece and struggle your way to your own answers.

Book Review: Tortured Wonders

Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels by Rodney Clapp (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004. 278 pp)

Rodney Clapp is the executive editor of Brazos Press. Previously, he was employed as an editor at Christianity Today and InterVarsity Press. Clapp has written countless articles on the church and culture as well as seven books.

I hate Spirit 105.3. If you like that radio station and I hurt your feelings, I apologize. In all honesty, I really do not want you to have hurt feelings, but I find Spirit 105.3 less wholesome and family friendly (as they advertise) and more vomit-inducing otherworldly fakery. Of course I am painting this station in broad strokes and I have no special insight regarding the spiritual lives of its disc jockeys, but every bit of spiritual advice I hear on air sounds like it came from the front porch of a wooden house in a Thomas Kinkade painting.

Enter Rodney Clapp and his book Tortured Wonders. In a way, Clapp’s premise in this book is a rebuttal against a “Spirit 105.3” spirituality. While our local Christian radio station seeks to disconnect the soul from the body promoting a Christian spirituality fit for people playing harps in heaven, Clapp reminds us that God created the human body and said that it was good.

Clapp splits Tortured Wonders in half. The first section, titled “Classical Christian Spirituality,” details Orthodox Christianity and the themes that pushed it towards an angelic spirituality. Part two, “Christianity in the Light (and Darkness) of the 21st Century,” depicts the ways in which an Orthodox spirituality could translate to our modern culture.

Clapp writes:

“As human beings, as tortured wonders, we are each of us ‘in between.’ We think, we speak, we dream, we pray, so we set ourselves apart from animals and the rest of creation. And yet we are also animals – like them, we are embodied; like them, we are born, we eat and live for a spell, and we die. We humans, then, are luminal creatures, teetering on the threshold between the divine and the bestial” (177).

It follows from this quote that Christian spirituality demands a more holistic approach. Too often, Christians define Orthodoxy as a religion of the mind. Through apologetics and prayer, classical and modern Christians actively participate in mental workouts. Clapp counters in arguing that Orthodox Christianity contains a spirituality of body and mind.

Our bodies are constant reminders that we own a one-way ticket to death. While some cover up sneezes with a handkerchief and others defy aging through Botox, human beings are incapable of outrunning death. Simply put, every day we wake up, we are one day closer to death. Understanding this concept, Clapp contends that a spirituality of the body ought to be a Christian practice.

Personally, Tortured Wonders has influenced me to pay close attention to the treatment of my body. I admit that I have fallen prey to an exclusive spirituality of the mind. This book has encouraged me to begin running, not for the sake of obtaining a good appearance, but for the purpose of submitting my body to something that I’d rather not do. Similarly, I am more aware of the food nourishing me. Eating is a spiritual act. It is done in community and the source of nourishment ought to be considered. If I eat processed foods, then I am consuming a food that is not only unhealthy, but also loaded with sugars and salts added for the purpose of tricking my anatomy to enjoy it the most. Thus, eating natural foods bring the benefits of health and moderation.

Tortured Wonders succeeds in expanding the breadth of what we consider spirituality. Although it is not a page turner, the themes present in the book provide a unique perspective. I recommend Tortured Wonders to anyone who is interested in a holistic approach to spirituality.

Film Review: It Might Get Loud

It Might Get Loud directed by Davis Guggenheim (Thomas Tull productions and Sony Pictures Classics, NR, 98 minutes)

Starring Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White

Everyone loves electric guitar. Beyond its pleasant aesthetic and varying tonal qualities lies an iconic cultural status. From the metal-head who spends more time shredding in Guitar Center than in the classroom to the almost universal urge to play guitar in the air when a real guitar does not suffice, guitar wins. I am unaware of the competition guitar entered but it totally won.

It Might Get Loud caters to our dreams and desires. While our rock star fantasies died before inception through Junior High and High School bands or garage rock with friends, the movie documents the rise past these beginning stages by Jimmy Page, the Edge, and Jack White. We visit early practices spaces with each guitarist. We get to hear the records that influenced these guitarists to continue their craft.

With gorgeous cinematography, each guitarist explains the methods by which he creates his music. We see Jimmy Page leaning on his overdrive, the Edge explaining his use of delay, and Jack White jamming with his son. The documentary is at its best when the guitarists reminisce on foundational stories of their careers. Jimmy Page discusses how Led Zeppelin recorded IV as he walks through Headley Grange  – the house where the band practiced and recorded many songs. The Edge describes the connection he found with a Gibson Explorer as he searched for his first guitar purchase. And Jack White vividly explains how being a musician alienated him from his peers in his Detroit neighborhood but also inspired him to continually play more music.

Despite the many beautiful portions of the movie, It Might Get Loud has many faults holding it down from being an excellent film. Like a loud and lazy guitar solo, the movie has little structure and no direction. Too often the guitarists wax poetically about what it means to play guitar without ever pulling their grand metaphors back to reality. When the three guitarists meet in a big warehouse to talk about guitar playing techniques and jam Led Zeppelin, U2, and White Stripes songs, the interactions seem awkward and forced.

Ultimately, I would liken It Might Be Loud to an intermediate guitarist playing guitar for an hour and a half. If that thought annoys you, this movie is not for you. Conversely, if you can handle such mindless compositions, you may walk away with an appreciation for these guitarists who have made a living doing the very thing about which most can only dream.

Book Review: The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen (New York: Random House, 2010. 397 pp)

Born in Rhode Island, Thomas Mullen graduated from Oberlin College. His first novel, The Last Town on Earth, received  the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction, Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune best book of the year. Mullen currently resides in Atlanta with his wife and two sons.

“Large than life, she’d heard someone say. What can be larger than life? Death, or is that smaller? People do tend to become larger in death, their finer qualities extending outward like an endlessly serialized tale, their flaws and foibles forgotten, their stories continually retold. Larger than death. She thought about that and smiled, here, late at night, in a graveyard” (395).

Mullen’s pen – or for those who appreciate realism, his keyboard – speaks to a profound truth. Those people we remember fondly or infamously will inevitably become caricatures of who they really were. For me, Randy Johnson’s fastball gains speed and Ken Griffey, Jr. roams a larger territory in centerfield as the memory fades. Someday, the exploits of these players will become as legendary as the mythical feats of Babe Ruth himself. Similarly, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers points readers to the intersection between fact and fiction.

Placed in the murky depths of the Depression Era, the fictional account of Jason and Whit Fireson (known as the Firefly Brothers) fits neatly between the bloody shenanigans of Al Capone and John Dillinger. As reputations grew, the exploits of these mobsters became fabled. In the case of the Firefly Brothers, it seems that death holds no power over them. Fittingly, the book starts with Mullen writing:

“It all began when they died” (p. xiii).

Whether they are running from death or running to death depending on your interpretation, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers reads as a mystery novel because, the brothers’ actions in the book are shrouded in the mystery of life and death.

Despite the supernatural elements of multiple resurrections, the perspective in the book is down-to-earth. Upholding the tension between fiction and fact, the historical reality of the relationship between the poor masses and the banking elite frame our protagonists as either victims of trying times who rob banks to make ends meet, or as social heroes rebelling against institutional evils.

On a personal level, the Depression left the family of the Firefly Brothers fatherless and in a complete mess. The government indicted their father – having lost his business to his creditors – on charges of murder. While the novel carries its fair share of Tommy Guns and speakeasies, the weight of broken relationships and a struggling family generates the backbone of this book.

Ultimately, Mullen fashions a page-turner out of Depression Era mobsters. Whether the narrative is intended to be fact, fiction, or something in between, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers depicts a broken family trying their best with the circumstances provided to them. This book is a nominee for my book of the year and I recommend it to everyone.

Book Review: The History of the Siege of Lisbon

The History of the Siege of Lisbon: A Novel by José Saramago (San Diego: Harcourt & Brace, 1998. 314 pp)

José Saramago was a Nobel Prize winning author from Portugal. He passed away at the age of 87 on June 18, 2010. Although Saramago did not receive widespread recognition until he was 60 years old, he has been highly prolific in the years since. Blindness, one of Saramago's most highly regarded books was made into a major motion picture in 2008. He is survived by his wife Pilar Del Rio and a daughter from a previous marriage.

Before we begin, I must confess that José Saramago is one of my favorite authors. His creativity, social critiques, and pseudo-realism in works like Blindness, The Stone Raft, and All the Names leave spellbinding memories etched in my brain.  With Saramago’s recent passing, I felt it necessary to finally read his Nobel Prize winning book, The History of the Siege of Lisbon.

Characteristic of Saramago’s work, The History of the Siege of Lisbon contains long flowing sentences with little punctuation. Where a period would usually suffice, Saramago inserts a comma; where quotation marks typically reside, he deletes them. With these characteristics in mind, the book requires a close reading.

The History of the Siege of Lisbon follows a lonely proof-reader named Raimundo Silva through his secluded lifestyle within the remarkable metropolis of Lisbon. Raimundo’s only friends seem to be reference books on grammar and his only hobby is to correct the thoughts of others. One day while Raimundo edits a book detailing the history of the siege of Lisbon, he decides to create instead of edit. Where the book once reminded us that the crusaders came to the aid of the Portuguese in the war against the Moors, Raimundo’s newly revised edition  concludes that the crusaders most certainly did not heed the call to help their Portuguese brethren. A simple “no” not only alters the course of history, it also modifies his relationship with his publishing house. Ultimately, Raimundo’s talent is the only thing that keeps him from unemployment.

The turmoil generated by a proofreader’s decision to create instead of edit brings Raimundo some unlikely benefit: the publishing house hires a lovely woman named Maria Sara to proofread the proofreaders. As the narrative expands, Raimundo and Maria’s relationship slowly turns from professional to something slightly more romantic. Raimundo’s brazen attempt to alter a historical fact intrigues Maria and one day she encourages him to finish the history of the siege of Lisbon with the changed premise regarding the crusaders. What follows is a masterfully blended tale of both Raimundo and Maria’s relationship and the relationship of characters developed in the revised history book Raimundo writes at the request of Maria Sara.

“The two roses in the vase are standing in water from which they draw nourishment, it is true that they do not last long, but relatively speaking, neither do we” (285).  

The History of the Siege of Lisbon is ultimately a book about life, death, and the relationships that keep us going. Years pass on a clock and years pass on a face, but the more important part of life is the relationship you have with the people around you, the joy of having a second rose in the vase.

As mentioned before, The History of the Siege of Lisbon is a challenging read. José Saramago’s unique style coupled with a story told in two dimensions requires an astute eye. However, persistence pays off with this book as the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who is willing to work through the challenging syntax in order to see the narrative as a whole. However, if you are new to José Saramago, I urge you to start with a more popular work such as Blindness.