Quiet Bubble

Let’s make it official

Oh, yeah… I should probably mention this.  15 May 2010, Jackson, MS—best wedding ever.

Crown

I had forgotten what localized, longstanding pain feels like.  I suppose I needed the reminder, but Jesus.

My only significant experience with high-octane dentistry occurred when I was 16, and had my wisdom teeth removed at the Baylor Hospital’s School of Dentistry.  If you want to know what living on the edge really means, try to imagine having your tooth sawed in two by a shaky-handed medical student who didn’t inject enough local anesthetic to deaden the operating area completely… and then, because it’s local anesthetic—as opposed to the knock-you-out kind—, picture yourself awake and alert the entire time.

Beyond that, though, it’s just been regular checkups for me. 

Two months ago, though, I noticed that cold drinks made a particular ache throb for a minute.  Cavity, I figured.  Well, it’s about time I got one.  My dentist surprised me, unpleasantly, by pointing out that the molar was cracked, and that it would need a crown—a porcelain mount on the grinded-down stub of my actual tooth.  At least I didn’t need a root canal.

So, this afternoon, I had my first major dental work since I was old enough to drink legally.  And, holy hell, did I need a drink afterward.  Oh, my time in the dentist’s chair wasn’t bad, except for the painful shots in the gums that, um, took away the possibility of later pain.  An hour ago, though, the anesthetic faded away, leaving me with a searing and constant ache that’s much worse than the occasional soreness I had when swishing ice water around in my mouth.

The Germans probably have a word for the odd experience of intentionally causing oneself a great burst of pain in order to avoid duller but more constant pain in the long run.  Does anyone know what that is?  Also, does anyone have any ideas as to why this horrible, dignity-reduced procedure is called crowning?  Because I sure as fuck don’t feel royal right now.  We’ve got to be able to create a better, more precise term.  So, I turn it to you, because I’m too sick of this to think straight—what’s a better term for a crown?

The unfolding garden

On Sunday afternoon, Mynelle Gardens reminded me of why I like Jackson, Mississippi. I needed a reminder. The arboretum is nestled in a mixed-use neighborhood in the western section, and it’s so close to I-20 that, on a clear day, you can see the cars hovering in the distance above the haze, rumbling down the interstate. A Popeye’s Chicken is across the street. Mynelle Garden’s entrance building lies on the corner of a major thoroughfare and a residential street.

Now, that reception building didn’t inspire confidence, nor did the small, potholed parking lot . Once, I suppose the building was painted chocolate brown. The shingles and window trim looked like they were still straining under the terror of Hurricane Katrina, which laid waste to the garden four years ago. Inside, there were a few sun-bleached gardening books and cracked linoleum.

But the receptionist was awfully cute, the entrance fee was a measly four bucks, and fish food was 50 cents a bag. All good signs.

Like Portland’s Japanese Garden—my all-time favorite—Mynelle Gardens starts small. The opening path is several feet below the main garden, and rises up in a slow winding fashion. A tree looms overhead but otherwise all the color is at ground level. Some tiny herbs, growths of azaleas and hydrangeas, some monkey grass—so far, it was nothing spectacular.

Then, I strolled upward a few feet, into a large open lawn with a centerpiece fountain, a variety of blues, pinks, and red flowers bordering the area. The red-brick and spacious Westbrook House (currently undergoing renovation) lingered on the edge like a fleeting thought. Honeysuckle and magnolia blossom perfumed the spring air. Sensation began to seep into my nose and my eyes. I heard bird chirps everywhere but never saw one, a single one, in my whole visit.

The house—for the Westbrooks did once live on the grounds, in the 1920s and 1930s—enticed me but the paths dovetailed into growth that I couldn’t quite see through. I chose the paths, and found more azaleas and un-nameable blossoms. Where the entrance and lawn featured plants mostly at ground level, I quickly found myself draped and drenched in color and aroma, a blanket of colors above and around me. Bumblebees hopped from blossom to blossom, doing their work. A creek snaked through the gardens; two bridges straddled it. A huge pond, engorged with fish and turtles, swelled at the garden’s center. Wisteria, cypress, baby’s breath, Queen Anne’s lace, and roses tumbled down and swung from crevasses that seemed too small to contain them, like an overstuffed closet bursting open.

Indeed, Mynelle Gardens’ interior felt like the TARDIS—impossibly larger on the inside than it looks on the outside. Paths and minor gardens—fresh revelations, all—unfold from space throughout the garden. It’s gigantic, and lovely. Adding to the otherworldiness, the city noise—honks, car wheels on asphalt, dogs barking—reminded me that I was walking through part of a neighborhood. Most private and public gardens (most American ones, anyway) are set well away from the bustle, to act consciously as reprieves to the urban life.

Whether by accident or design, Mynelle Gardens is, however, right inside the tumult. Somehow, its location in the Jackson noise makes me like it all the more.Its fragile comforts are made more poignant because it’s not isolated from the industrial, working-class, mostly black neighborhood in which it resides.

I’ll be back, and soon. Hell, we haven’t had our spring rains yet… so I didn’t even see the gardens in full bloom. I can’t wait.

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RELATED: I’ve written about gardens before.

Reader’s block

Elizabeth Gilbert breaks it down.

During these Lenten days, I’ve been blocked. Writer’s block is one thing, a thing that I’m not always sure actually exists, but what David Markson pegged as reader’s block—which is what I’ve got along with the regular kind—is much worse. I’ve had a hard time engaging myself with new books; I’m halfway through seven books but I haven’t finished one in weeks. Watchmen and Coraline are the only movies I’ve seen in theaters this year. To kick my ass into gear, I’ve downloaded the new Phish concerts, out-of-print Pere Ubu albums, Afropop stuff, and even some Swedish heavy metal, but haven’t mustered the energy to listen to any of it. I only saw a local production of The Vagina Monologues because some friends were in it. I’m distracted, jumpy, unable to finish even things that I’m liking.

(This month’s “Quick hits” column was an act of will.)

So, these days I’ve been increasingly drawn to books and comics about art scenes, about those worlds of word-of-mouth, gossip, and clandestine action through which art is created and socialized. I’m not especially interested in writing about writing—right now, I know literary interviews would just depress me—but in writing about communities. I guess I feel alone as I’m hammering through my own children’s novel, and want to remind myself that there’s company.

So, Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives has been, so far, a delicious, lusty, adventurous novel that I don’t want to end. (At the rate I’m reading it, it won’t.) He imagines the young, rebellious literary world of 1970s Mexico City so thoroughly—with diaries, an oral history featuring interviewees spanning over years and countries, sample poems, political discourse, and all done with a quick wit and conversational tone that convincingly creates over 40 distinct and vibrant speaking voices—that I forget that he’s imagined this whole world. I don’t care much about the plot, and I don’t think Bolaño does, either. It’s the world that he’s conjured up that propels me forward, and that reminds me that art and politics doesn’t grow from vacuums but from people and interpersonal conflicts and commingling. Bolaño’s prose free-associates, doubles back on itself, and characters revise what other characters have said about people, poetry, and moments. He’s done a nifty trick—The Savage Detectives infuses the inner workings of literary movements and “little magazines” with the same heightened tension and significance as Cold War détentes and wargames.

This emphasis on an art world’s networks providing propulsion, rather than a linear plot engine, is also present in Jiro Taniguchi and Natsuo Sekikawa’s 10-volume manga The Times of Botchan. (This time, it’s not my fault that I haven’t finished; so far, only three volumes have been published in English.) Sôseki Natsume’s Botchan is one of Japan’s most famous novels, set during the Meiji period (late-1800s to early 20th century), when Japan began to modernize and to be influenced by the West. Times is not a comics adaptation of the novel, though portions of it end up in the manga. Rather, Taniguchi (art) and Sekikawa (writing) recreate the Meiji period in which Natsume wrote his masterpiece, showing the writer’s influences, the lives of the writers and students who worked in his sphere, and the changing mores and industries from which this literary community emerged. Where Bolaño allows character to be defined primarily through dialogue and blunt detail, Taniguchi’s art pulls me in because of its almost photographic richness and supple engagement with nature. Each panel contains a world. Each character’s glance and sigh contain multitudes.

As much as Bolaño, Taniguchi, and Sekikawa have helped me lately, I owe the slow dissolving of my funk to Elizabeth Gilbert. I’ve got friends who swear by Eat Pray Love, which I’m slow to pick up because of a longstanding aversion to memoir, but I loved, loved, loved her novel Stern Men. So, when La Bella suggested that I take a look at her TED lecture on writing and the nature of “genius,” I didn’t waste time.

It’s been the most purely useful and invigorating piece I’ve heard this year. If you use imaginative faculties at all, for work or play, you’ll find something challenging and fascinating in this 18-minute speech. (See above.) Gilbert makes me laugh out loud, and very little has been able to these days.

What cheers me even more than the Gilbert lecture, however, is seeing another artist charge out of his own block, arms swinging for joy. Dylan Horrocks, the New Zealand cartoonist/theorist behind Hicksville and Atlas, have shaped my theories on art perhaps more than any other contemporary artist. Hicksville in particular was the first long-form comic I ever read that was, in part, explicitly about how comics are created and distributed, taking into account the artform’s history and aesthetics. There are allusions galore to everything from Carl Barks’ Uncle $crooge to Rodolphe Töpffer’s mid-1800s graphic novels.

Horrocks’ comics and essays (including the classic “The Perfect Planet: Comics, Games, and World-Building”) reflect an interest in art as a map of consciousness, in the creation of art primarily as building an environment rather than a story. The unfinished Atlas, so far about a cartoonist who attempts to map the sky, takes the world-building (rather than narrative-building) aesthetic to even further extremes.

For selfish reasons, I’ve been feverishly anticipating each new issue of Atlas. My writings, including three completed but unpublished manuscripts, seem to be more interested in establishing an environment in which my characters can inhabit than in moving them forward in a specific trajectory. Horrocks seems to share and complicate my artistic vision, articulating it more forcefully than I ever could.

But he’s been silent for the last three years. He’s never been quick—Hicksville appears serially in issues of Horrocks’ self-published and intermittently appearing Pickle; a new issue of Atlas came out once a year, if I was lucky. He’s written before of a crushing inability to write or draw. I know the feeling; I even wrote him a letter of encouragement in 2004. Still, I had begun to give up on him.

So, his launch of his new site, Hicksville, has gladdened my heart. Two weeks ago, he bravely announced plans to publish online two serials, the ongoing saga of Atlas, and reprints of his one-shot comics. “The Physics Engine” hits home for me. The struggle to inhabit the real world faithfully, while creating one of one’s own, that has some connection with the aforementioned real world… well, let’s just say I know what’s been driving Horrocks crazy.

And that’s why I’m so glad he’s back, juiced up and ready to imagine. His crude line, combined with his sophisticated sense of narrative and character development, feels close to Bolaño’s prose and Gilbert’s chatty speaking style. He provides a model for my work, and a way out of my various blocks. Since he’s committed to chopping that block down, I’ve no excuse. Here goes.

The old home place

My last month, in flashes: the crush of 9400 sweaty, anxious handshakes, and go-getter conversations in the exhibit hall of this year’s Modern Language Association meeting, in San Francisco; the fog draping itself over the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay, with foghorns crying forlornly into the twilight and La Bella warm at my side; floors strewn with glittery wrapping paper on Christmas morning; the glow of candlelight rising onto faces at the eleven o’clock church service the night before; four days spent hurtling from my mom’s house in Mesquite to my dad’s house in Duncanville, with the onrush and honks of Dallas traffic in-between the two suburbs; a boozy, bedraggled, joyous high-school semi-reunion, at a hipster redneck bar (say that three times fast) called the Double Wide; frantically stuffing my past nine years into boxes, and throwing out the rest as—

Enough. You get the idea. I’ve been busy.

It’s that last clause of the first paragraph that’s caught me unprepared. Until a week ago, I’ve been living in the same efficiency apartment since September 1999. My first home away from home—because dorms don’t count—apartment #426 has been storage room, book depository, safe haven, bedquarters, bane of my existence. Two years ago, I decided that enough was enough:

Over the last year, I’ve become disenchanted with apartment living. Oh, there are things I still love—rent is cheap; utilities are cheap; maintenance is free and prompt; and I live ten minutes from my job, my grocery store, my favorite restaurants, and the World’s Greatest Bookstore. But I won’t miss the thin walls, or the bright green carpet, or the people shouting from their balconies down to people in the parking lot at all hours of the night, or the thump-thump-thump of the people walking above me (and, as I pace when I think, I’m sure my downstairs neighbors won’t miss me, either), or the shrieking kids, or the young men who occasionally “hang out” in the parking lot, drinking their dinners from paper sacks.

More than all of that, I won’t miss the strictures against defining my home for my own damn self. It’s not allowed for me to drill holes into the walls, in order to hang art. Mounted tape is A-okay, apparently, but not nails. I’ve broken this stricture, several times, as my art collection has grown. So, I’m sure I won’t be getting back my deposit. No matter. I wish I could just contract a new carpet to be laid down, or paint the walls a new number, without interference. In a house of my own, I could do this. In an apartment that’s not rent-controlled or owned by me, it’s obviously a different story.

La Bella and I had planned on moving in together in early March—La Bella’s lease ended on February 28th; mine ended at the close of January—but the house was too perfect to pass up.  The price is right; the size and layout is right; and we’ve been sold on the neighborhood for ages. Belhaven College, a small Christian liberal-arts school, is nestled within the miniature borough, and my alma mater Millsaps is just across a major thoroughfare from Belhaven.  The University of Mississippi Medical Center (a teaching hospital) is about a mile down the street.  The neighborhood’s population is a diverse mix of young and middle-aged couples, young families, and lots of students of various stripes, young doctors, and new professors. Everyone walks. Joggers and leashed dogs are common sights.  There’s a lot of Old Jackson Money floating around, but the neighborhood is mostly middle-class with some pockets of artists and students who are barely making ends meet. Laurel Street Park, site of kids playing and superannuated hippies playing bad acoustic guitar, lies four blocks from home. Its vibe—half Old Money gone to seed, half young bohemian on the make—and physical feel reminds me of the parts of East Dallas in which I grew up, but without the booming lowriders at night.

Belhaven is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Jackson, tree-canopied and hilly. Eudora Welty spent her four-decade writing career in a big house in Belhaven that’s now a museum. Most of the house are at least 60 years old, with foundation problems, and creaking hardwood floors, and in that regard ours is no different.

We don’t own the house but I feel like it belongs to us. I think it chose us.

Josephine Haxton is a Jackson writer—her pen name is Ellen Douglas—whose last book (Witnessing, a collection of her essays) was published by my press in 2004.  We worked with Jo extensively on the book, helping her select pieces—she was beginning to suffer from Parkinson’s and memory loss by this point—and put things in sequence.  I went over to her house frequently in the summer of 2003, hands full of pencil-marked manuscript pages.  After discussing the manuscript and ironing out details, we would chat about books on her couch—she adored W.G. Sebald, and asked pointed questions about a novella on which I was working.  She had taught me in a creative writing class in spring 1999, and remained interested in her work. I admired her own output enough to be flattered and thoroughly humbled. Upon the book’s publication in August 2004, I watched her read, with characteristic wit and brio, an essay about Ava Gardner at a well-received reception. I lost track of her after that, though I would see her occasionally around town, always with friends assisting her, always looking a bit more frail than the last time.

Fast forward to mid-December 2008: La Bella noticed a Belhaven house on her street that’s up for rent, and called about it immediately.  We arranged a visit for the next day on our lunch break.  As soon as we walked in, I knew it was Jo’s old house.  The woman showing us the house turned out to be Jo’s daughter-in-law, and we fell into a relaxed conversation about Jo and how she’s handling life. She now lives with her son and daughter-in-law.  By then, La Bella had already fallen in love with the house, and appreciated having the creative aura of a well-known writer around us.  By the time we had trod on the whining floorboards, we were stealing glances at each other and mouthing that this was our” house.

And that was that.  The rental was relatively easy, with a straightforward contract, and we sealed our goodwill by giving the daughter-in-law a luscious black-and-white print of Jo that I found in the press’s depository of old photographs. The insanity of utility deposits, installations, and all the regular crap was compounded by discovering that our water heater needed to be replaced. There are probably mice, though we’re not sure. Our two cats, who haven’t technically met yet though they’re in the house, will probably cure the rodent problem if they don’t kill each other first.

You know, the usual.

As with the spring cleaning I started two years ago, I’m keeping Gorjus’s recent thoughts in mind:

Like every ex-dj music aficionado, my shelves are crammed with music, in my case over six formats: compact disc, cassette, digital, vinyl, 8-track, and reel-to-reel. As space is increasingly at a premium, this is my attempt to make sense of all the noise. The goal is to find wonderful music hiding in my own house, stuffed in closets or secreted on hard drives.

The verdicts are: Shelf (meaning you get a spot in the front room by the various music players), Second Listen (verily, I am intrigued), Exile (banished to the back closet, but not forgotten), and Salvation Army (seeya).

I’m applying his mindset to everything—books, music, DVDs, comics, tech stuff, clothes. Both La Bella and I learned how much crap we’ve accumulated over the years without thinking. Though the house is substantially larger than both of our apartments combined, it’s time for a lot of this shit to go, Goodwill-style or eBay. We need the shelf space. And with all the deposits and new household purchases, we need the money.

You won’t hear complaints from me. For the first time in a long time, I honestly feel like I’m at home.

Change you can believe in

I still exist, I promise. It’s just that developments are afoot, and not all of them involve my boy and his caviar—which has, by the way, morphed momentarily into Three Girls on a Hidden Subway Train. Who knows where the novel is going? I don’t, but that’s half the fun and all of the frustration.

Time’s been (over)occupied by a number of things: 1) sketching out an end-of-year working vacation to San Francisco, with La Bella in tow; 2) catching up on various comics and movies of 2008, with plans for unconventional year-end wrap-ups; 3) book reviews for the local alt-weekly, one of which has appeared; 4) Christmas shopping; 5) coordinating eBay sales to afford #1 and #4; and, most importantly, 6) boxing up my stuff and planning a January move into a bonafide house.

All of this, and more, will make it on to these pages. Honestly, though, I’m not sure how much you’ll see of me this month. Stay tuned—you never know.

Muñeco: A 24-hour comic

If you just want to download the comic and not read my preamble/essay, it’s right here as a PDF. Feel free to spread it around, with the appropriate credit to me.

To this day, I’m not sure why I did it.

But let’s start at the beginning. In high school, I was in thrall with cartoonist/comics theorist Scott McCloud, especially after reading his seminal Understanding Comics (the first work of comics theory done explicitly in the form it analyzes) and his retro sci-fi series Zot! back to back in 1994. In the former, he gave me—and thousands of other readers—license to think about comics as an art and specifically about the art’s formal characteristics and effects on the reader. In the latter, he presented his own work as a case study to be read using the critical apparatus of Understanding Comics and, though I didn’t know it at the time, largely introduced the structure and grammar of manga to me. Both works have now been criticized amply and argued over but nevertheless remain touchstones in comics. They’re primary sources for any serious reader interested in the comics form.

In college a few years later, I began hearing an insistent buzz about the 24-hour comic concept, which Scott McCloud had first created—more or less on a dare—in 1990. About a decade later, he codified the rules, in an explicit dare to his readers:

To create a complete 24 page comic book in 24 continuous hours.

That means everything: Story, finished art, lettering, colors (if you want 'em), paste-up, everything! Once pen hits paper, the clock starts ticking. 24 hours later, the pen lifts off the paper, never to descend again. Even proofreading has to occur in the 24 hour period. [Computer-generated comics are fine of course, same principles apply].

No sketches, designs, plot summaries or any other kind of direct preparation can precede the 24 hour period. Indirect preparation such as assembling tools, reference materials, food, music etc. is fine.

Your pages can be any size, any material. Carve 'em in stone; print 'em with rubber stamps; draw 'em on your kitchen walls with a magic marker. Anything.

The 24 hours are continuous. You can take a nap if you like but the clock will continue to tick!

It’s more than a little crazy. And yet hundreds of cartoonists would eventually write and draw their own, an official, annual “24-Hour Comics Day” would established and marketed, and I would be compelled to create my own.

I have always loved to draw. I doodle a lot—during work meetings, on my notes for a blog post, in the margins of books. I once got a B+ in an intermediate drawing class at my college. Generally, I prefer drawings and sketches to finished paintings and 3-D architectural mockups. I’ve been an avid comics reader since childhood.

I am not, however, a cartoonist, either by profession or training. I’m just not good enough, and my skills haven’t developed since junior high, nor beyond the rudimentary. It’s just not in me. I didn’t own the proper pens, nibs, ink, art pencils, high-end erasers, or even a sketchbook.

The 24-hour comic, though, presented a challenge that pulled me in. Maybe it was love of comics. Maybe it’s because I had nothing to do one weekend. Maybe it was because I was trying to crush a bout of writer’s block. Probably, it was a combination of these things but I’d like to think it was because of a book I was reading at the time.

Muffler Men explores the world of these folk-art sculptures created by mechanics and amateur welders in their spare time, from busted muffler and other junk-shop parts. In the New York Times, Rita Reif compared them to cigar-store Indians but noted that “the skinny metal figures with shimmering muffler heads and torsos and pipe-thin legs found outside auto repair shops are wittier, more imaginative and flamboyantly painted.” It was the first book I’d seen devoted to the funny statues I would see driving around Mississippi, and being collected by my (richer, more successful) colleagues and friends. Muffler men were showing up in local art galleries with four-figure price tags. My friend Pete has one—a rusty cross between an insect and an armadillo—that lurks on his front porch.

I’ve always liked the sculptures. That fall, A children’s book idea, about a muffler man who comes to life, was rattling in my head. I figured—perhaps wrongly—that there wasn’t enough “there” for an illustrated book. Besides, I could barely draw. But I liked the book and its copious amount of photographs. The more my book idea banged around my brain, the more I wanted to flush it out of my system.

At the very least, I could flesh out the book. On a Saturday in late October 2000, I went to a local art supply store and stocked up on close to $50 worth of necessities. Fifty bucks, by the way, was a big deal to me then—a week’s worth of groceries at a time when I made $22,000 a year. I had decided, however, to force myself to create my muffler man story, by making a 24-hour comic.

The following Friday found me, at 8:00pm, with a full pot of coffee, my dining-room table cleared of debris, assorted snacks, and only the vaguest idea of a story. Ready, set, go.

Go, I did. Other than love-making, kite flying, and a weeklong hiking trip in Big Bend National Park, I doubt I’ve had that much fun. I quickly learned that I had no skill in drawing mechanical things, so I fudged a lot on cars and parts. (Keep in mind that the whole story takes place in a automobile mechanic’s shop.) My lettering was too thin and tight. I had no idea how to mix black ink properly or to paint it evenly. Gestures and perspective presented severe problems. Around 2:00am, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. So, I went to sleep until 6:30am.

I dreamt of the comic. I woke before my alarm, energized and with fingers antsy for my pen and brushes.

Even better, the story had fully formed in my mind. I felt bad that my ambitions overmatched my technical skill by a ratio of 10 to 1. Then again, what artist is ever 100% pleased by his final product? Besides, I was so absorbed in figuring out form—getting layouts, lettering, and design to tell my story gracefully—that I didn’t sweat (too much) the fact that I couldn’t draw.

Finally, at 8:00pm on Saturday evening, I finished applying white-out and touching up mistakes, and signed and dated the thing. I didn’t make it to 24 pages; mine is only 20. The drawing is crude. From panel to panel, faces didn’t have the consistency that I would like. The ending is rushed. My understanding of Hispanic characters is somewhat limited.

I like “Muñeco,” anyway, as much for its failures as its successes. For what it’s worth, I think there’s plenty of the latter. The cat, based on my own Eliza, comes across convincingly to my eyes. Though the overall layout is inconsistent, it’s clean and inventive on a page-by-page basis. Design-wise, it does some interesting things. The damn thing hangs together narratively. Little touches—the odd joke about Finnegans Wake (which remains unfinished on my nightstand), the King Crimson t-shirt (I do not, and never have, liked the band; why did I choose this?)—make me smile.

Mostly, I like it because it’s funny. It was rare (at the time) for me to attempt humor. Eight years after I drew the comic and buried it beneath other papers, I giggle at it.

I hope you will, too.

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Download “Muñeco” (“Muffler Man”) here. I hope you enjoy it. If nothing else, you’ll learn my real surname.

32 candles (and Quick Hits)

Walter Quietbubble and La Bella, at the former’s birthday party, hosted and coordinated by the latter. Happy birthday to me, etc…. Okay, it’s all music this time around.

Stay Positive (2008), by the Hold Steady: In 1984, Hüsker Dü released Zen Arcade, showing the punks, No Wavers, and post-punks how the music and lyrics could grow up and expand their horizons. With Stay Positive, Craig Finn and company (also fellows of “the bright new Minneapolis”) basically bring the classic record into the new millennium. The album even opens with a song called “Constructive Summer,” a sly nod to the Hüskers’ “Celebrated Summer,” with a riff that’s so close to Bob Mould’s slash-and-scintillate approach that he’s probably owed royalties. Except for throwaway lines, Holly and Charlemagne and all of Finn’s regular protagonists are long gone; and when they do appear, even they seem disgusted by the characters who can’t move beyond adolescence and high-school nostalgia. As with all Hold Steady albums, the characters continue to get wasted, have empty sex and sloppy mornings-after, and nervous breakdowns. But they were teenagers and young adults before—now, they’re pushing 40 and things look grim. Actions have consequences beyond the next moment on Stay Positive: people end up in jail, or wasting away their twenties, and repeated refrains in several songs is that “I knew some kids who didn’t come back” and “I knew some kids who died.” Sonically, the band’s finally found a way to integrate the keyboards into the rock, horns add texture, Finn’s vocal delivery is better than ever before, and song structures get more complicated. Fueled by desperation, hurtled forward by fear, haunted by death, Stay Positive is a cry against the bleakness that, at long last, sounds like it’s coming from full-fledged adults. The closing three songs—merged onto a single track—essentially scolds arrested adolescents, but hilariously and poignantly. The Hold Steady loves its losers as they are but loves them too much to let them remain that way. A+

The Town and the City (2006), by Los Lobos: If Los Lobos has a weakness, it’s that it doesn’t have an inventive full-time drummer. Cougar Estrada has been a de facto band member for a decade but he’s just not as innovative nor as intricate as the guys around him. His flat beats can’t keep up with the ambient guitar textures, keyboard and sax washes, loping bass, and looped effects that swirl around this album. “The Road to Gila Bend” slashes and burns hard enough that Estrada’s parts could have been excised entirely. The stutter-step tempo of “The City” is held together by piano and guitar, not the drums. Only in the Mexican folk-themed songs—“Chuco’s Cumbia” and “Luna”—does Estrada show any flair. He’s solid but not inventive; he’s a mere timekeeper, and The Town and the City’s direct but haunting lyrics and melodic virtuosity need much more. David Hidalgo’s soulful voice and limpid delivery is as beguiling as ever. The songs are R&B masterpieces that have been hijacked by art-rock conventions. In other words, they’re spun gold. Or they would be, if the percussion was as propulsive and hip-swaying as they deserve. Actually, the music is so ethereal and Hidalgo’s voice so grounded that I wonder what this album would sound like without percussion at all. Probably spooky and wonderful, rather than the “almost great” that’s here. B+

Burnside on Burnside (2001), by R.L. Burnside: The north Mississippi hill country features blues that’s electric, with slurred and frayed slide guitar, mumbled and whiskey-befuddled lyrics that I can’t make out on the 15th listen, a willingness to experiment, and explosive drumwork. It’s closer to British punk than to the acoustic Delta blues 40 miles to the west. No wonder the kids like it. Case in point: this live set takes place at a club on Burnside Avenue, in Portland, Oregon. Burnside brings his son and nephew along for a scorched-earth ride through the territory. It’s the blues, so it’s all the same riff, but at least it’s a good riff. “Miss Maybelle,” “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” and “Long Haired Doney” ignite the room, and Burnside’s low moan keeps things sexy and scary in turns throughout the show. The beats are strong and driving. And he even gets off a good joke midset. B+

Hot Licks (1944-1946), by the International Sweethearts of Rhythm: A hard-swinging, all-women, multiracial big band from the Depression/post-WWII eras finally gets its due. Anna Mae Winburn led and conducted this explosive jazz combo for most of a decade, barnstorming into Armed Forces radio, the Apollo Theater, and dancehalls across America. Through brash, saucy renditions of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” and “One O’Clock Jump,” the girls prove themselves equals of the Swing Era’s better-known male orchestras. Winburn and company lacked the elegance of Duke Ellington and Count Basie’s bands, preferring to move in the musical direction of the high-voltage Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd. They succeeded, as these sixteen tracks show. I only wish the liner notes had paid as much attention to Winburn as her musicians did; the CD booklet adds little context, and misspells Winburn’s name to boot. A-

The Father of Delta Blues: Eugene Powell, alias Sonny Boy Nelson (1936): Since I’m taking on Ted Gioia’s Delta Blues for a book review, I’ve been trying, without much success, to get into country blues. (I’ve outlined my troubles with folk music before.) Nelson’s guitar lines, however, are more sophisticated and, when he sings, his voice is smoother and more relaxed than the vinyl crackle would suggest. Production values are problematic for this CD but that’s par for the course with transferring 78’s to digital means. These 19 songs, recorded on my birthday and the day after at New Orleans’ St. Charles Hotel, feature Nelson mostly as accompanist to Mississippi Matilda (shrill-voiced and haunting) and Robert Hill (throaty and too proud of his own voice). Nelson’s subtleties are perhaps too good for the two leads; at least he gets six songs to himself. Still, I miss drums, bass, melodic variety, structural intricacy, themes beyond trusty guns and untrustworthy women—you know, the lack that makes me shrug at the blues. Maybe it’s just me. B

A boy and his caviar: An update

A few months back, I mentioned a boy, some caviar and charcuterie, and a walk-in cooler, and how I was going to spend the next year figuring out how these things connect. Well, the writing proceeds apace. I still don’t know what this young black man and his expensive fish have to do with anything I’m working with right now, which includes: a long-lost subway map; three teenage girls on an impromptu adventure to an island off the western coast of Africa; a legendary cartoonist; and a DJ spinning platters deep into the night.

But I like it so far.

For what it’s worth, a guiding force of the book has been Afropop music by a variety of artists—King Sunny Ade, Youssou N’Dour, Orchestra Baobab, Fela Kuti. It’s what I’ve been listening to as I type. (Though I note David Markson’s warning, when asked about the speed with which Jack Kerouac worked: “That’s not writing; that’s typing.”) The music’s beginning to seep into the novel. What I like about the music is that it slow-burns. Within the music, distinct signposts—choruses, bridges, separate movements—often fail to emerge. Solos are notable mostly by their absence. Because I don’t usually understand what’s being sung, the voices are just other instruments in the mix rather than the point around which the rest of the song coalesces. The instrumentation is insistent but gentle—there are lots of drums but no pounding drumwork—and the players tend to nudge you along rather than dragging you.

The music is not, however, mere wallpaper. Songs build gradually in intensity and it’s almost always danceable. Musicians step into or subtract themselves from the mix, almost imperceptibly—a lilting guitar line here, a sinuous sax there, percussion everywhere. As with swing or free jazz, Afropop feels as if everyone’s soloing at once, but with subtlety and with internal cohesion. The line between background and foreground gets blurred frequently.

In a minor way, that’s the way the book is progressing. There are lots of digressions, stray details that I hope build up to deft characterizations and apt settings, and a plotline through which the events move fluidly and casually. We’ll see.

Anyway, I’m working, slowly but productively. It feels good. As a result, the blog’s abbreviated posting schedule will remain in place until further notice.

(stet)

I edit books for a living. Not newspapers, not magazines, not movies. I edit books. I’m being repetitive because the following exemplifies how a typical job conversation goes for me.

At a party, or an art reception, or a meet-and-greet for some community board, or whatever:

Me: ...So the movie’s about three generations of a Taiwan family living in Taipei, this huge glowing metropolis. It’s really funny and thoughtful and beautiful, one of the best movies about family that I’ve—

Random stranger [holding glass of white wine]: I don’t like movies with subtitles.

[awkward pause]

Random stranger [sipping]: Soooooo, what do you do for a living?

Me [wishing I had a drink of my own]: I edit books.

Random stranger: So, that’s like newspapers and stuff. right?

After I clarify what I do, most people move quickly on to other subjects or glance somewhere over my shoulder, to see if there’s someone sexier or more interesting that they should be talking to. That’s fine. Unless you’re an astronaut, cartoonist, or train conductor, I’m not that interested in what you do for a living, either. Oh, my job is interesting—sometimes even enjoyable—to me but I don’t expect it to hold anyone else in fascination. Hell, even I don’t like talking about my job—I do that enough during work hours. In part, that’s because editing is difficult to define. If the average American has any idea of an editor at all, it comes from His Girl Friday or from J. Jonah Jameson, Peter Parker’s editor and editorial nemesis of Spider-Man. Perhaps you know the routine: the chain-smoking, clipped-voice foulmouth who sits at a desk groaning under the weight of papers and books, and who yells “Get me rewrite! Pronto!” If you grew up in the Hamptons or in an especially literary family, maybe your idea of an editor is the New Yorker’s William Shawn, an agoraphobic who was so afraid of being in elevators that he was rumored to always carry a hatchet in his briefcase… in case he got stuck in an elevator and needed to bust his way out.

So there’s the editor in the American imagination: either an asshole or a milquetoast but, either way, someone who doesn’t actually do very much beyond flailing arms around or mumbling.

Usually, if the aforementioned partygoer expresses interest in my work, he’s actually interested in what he can bring to the editing field, not in finding out what I really do. The conversation then proceeds in one of several ways:

1) The dormant writer. “I’ve been thinking about writing a book. My life would be one hell of a story, if only I could find the time to do it.” (Nod my head, pretend to agree.)

2) The expectant writer. “I’ve written a book about my life, which is one hell of a story. Will you read it for me?” (I don’t really have time to do freelance work.)

3) Truant from the grammar police. “Well, I guess I’d better mind my p’s and q’s around you, then, ha ha.” [A nervous glance at me]. “I’ll speak correct from now on.” (Grin politely, pretend I haven’t heard fifty variants of this joke.)

4) The one-upper, still bitter about bad marks in junior high. “Oh, yeah? So, do you know what ‘sesquipedalian’ means?” (Yes.) “What about ‘synecdoche?’” (Yes, again.) “Oh, really? Well, have you read this incredibly obscure 2000-page book that I pretend to have read, in order to separate true language lovers from heathens such as yourself?” (Excuse myself to find the restroom. Pronto.)

5) The condescending commiserator. “Don’t you just hate it when people don’t use the serial comma properly?” (I don’t care enough to weep about it.) “Or when people use ‘penultimate’ when they mean ‘ultimate?’” (It’s mildly amusing but I don’t, you know, hate it.) “I figured you could sympathize with me, because I’m a real stickler for grammar.” (Ah. That’s why no one was talking to you.)

Most of the above comes because people confuse my work with that of a copyeditor, those mavens of fine tuning who treat the Chicago Manual of Style like the Talmud, and who split into factions over minor points of MLA documentation style. While I dutifully own a copy of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and work with copyeditors, this isn’t really what I do.

So, what is it that I do? Editing’s a hodgepodge of a number of duties and skill sets, and the definitions of each shift slightly, depending on what sort of publication on which an editor might work. My stepdad once asked me to sum up my job in two sentences or less. I couldn’t do it.

To be fair, there’s not much guidance for this pop quiz. For a take on the aspiring editor—i.e., the lowly editorial assistant—there’s hardly anything better than Megham Daum’s essay, “My Misspent Youth.” For what happens once you wield the editor’s pen, there are plenty of books—usually from a writer’s, and not an editor’s, point-of-view—but not many good, brisk essays.

Count Brian Doyle’s new essay for the Kenyon Review as Exhibit A. Although ostensibly about the art of writing–and receiving–rejection letters, the essayist provides a relatively succinct definition of the editor’s job and the various roles she juggles daily. A taste:

My friend James and I have for years now plotted a vast essay about editing, an essay we may never write because we have children and paramours and jobs and books to write, but we take great glee in sketching it out, because there are hundreds of subtle joys and crimes of editing, and editing is hardly ever what the non-inky world thinks it is, which is copyediting, which is merely the very last and easiest piece of editing—rather like a crossword puzzle, something you can do near-naked and beer in hand. Real editing means staying in touch with lots of writers, and poking them on a fairly regular basis about what they are writing and reading and thinking and obsessing about and what they have always wanted to write but haven’t, and also it means sending brief friendly notes to lots of writers you have never worked with yet in hopes that you will, and also it means listening to lots and lots of people about lots and lots of ideas, some or all of which might wend their way into your pages, and it means being hip to the zeitgeist enough to mostly ignore it, and it means reading your brains out, and it means always having your antennae up for what you might excerpt or borrow or steal, and it means tinkering with pieces of writing to make them lean and taut and clear, and always having a small room open in the back of your head where you mix and match pieces to see if they have any zest or magnetism together, and it means developing a third eye for cool paintings and photographs and drawings and sculptures and carvings that might elevate your pages, and writing captions and credits and titles and subheads and contents pages, and negotiating with and calming the publisher, and fawning at the feet of the mailing manager, and wheedling assistants and associates, and paying essayists more than poets on principle, and soliciting letters to the editor, and avoiding conferences and seminars, and sending the printer excellent bottles of wine on every holiday, including Ramadan and Kwanzaa, just in case.

***

And dickering with photographers, battling in general on behalf of the serial comma, making a stand on behalf of saddle-stitching against the evil tide of perfect-bound publications, halving the number of witticisms in any piece of prose, reading galleys backwards to catch any stupid line breaks or egregious typos, battling on behalf of the semicolon, throwing away all business cards that say PROFESSIONAL WRITER, trying to read over-the-transom submissions within a week of their arrival, deleting the word unique on general principle and sending anonymous hate mail to anyone who writes the words fairly unique, snarling at writers who write We must or We should or, God help us all, the word shan’t, searching with mounting desperation for a scrap or shard or snippet of humor in this bruised and blessed world, reminding male writers that it’s OK to acknowledge that there are other people on the planet, halving the number of times any writer says me or I, checking page numbers maniacally, throwing away cover letters, checking the budget twice a day, and trying to read not most but all of your direct competitors, on the off-chance that there might be something delicious to steal.

Go read it.

(Thanks, OGIC.)