Alex Ross Gets Me to Listen to Beethoven

Book Reviewed: Listen to This, by Alex Ross

Last year, Alex Ross's history of 20th-century classical music, The Rest is Noise, was one of my favorite books of 2009. Ross is good writer, and his passion for his subject came out at every moment. I geeked out pretty hard-core over that book, chatting it up with my music-inclined friends and just generally bothering everyone I knew with stories about Shostakovich and Alban Berg. Obviously, I had to get a copy of his new book that came out this fall.

Listen to This is a collection of both original essays and pieces Ross previously wrote for The New Yorker. This time, it's about more than just atonal classical music. There's essays here on everything from Brahms to Radiohead. Overall, the book wasn't as strong as The Rest is Noise. It read a lot slower, and it wasn't quite as interesting. That's not to say that Ross has lost his touch for writing about music with the obsession of a true nerd. All that's still going on here.

As with most essay collections, some pieces are a lot better than others. Some essays I just didn't like because of the subject matter, such as the pieces on Brahms (who bores the hell out of me) and Mozart (which just rehashed a lot of info I already knew). Some pieces are just a lot of fun, like the essays about Radiohead and Bjork and the St. Lawrence Quartet. Finally, there are the "think" pieces which actually taught me a lot, particularly an essay entitled "Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues: Bass Lines of Music History," which is exactly what it sounds like.

There's a lot to love about Alex Ross and his love for music. He's a champion of classical music who hates the term "classical" as much as I do. He's a big supporter of music education and exposing different musical genres to people who wouldn't normally have the chance to hear them. He wants people to clap between movements the way they did a couple centuries ago, and he wants concertgoers and musical directors to lighten up. In other words, Ross is proposing that we change the way we experience a musical artform that most people describe as "dying." I can definitely get behind that.

As usual, the best thing about Ross's writing is the way he persuades me to listen to music I've written off too easily. This time around, he got me to listen to Beethoven's third symphony, "Eroica." I've never been a Beethoven person, but that might change. I checked out a recording of "Eroica" from the library, and I really liked it. Up next: an experiment in listening to Schubert.

Poem of the Week: "Railway," by Fred D'Aguiar

Note: Due to the copyright concerns that have been flying around the internet lately, I'll be posting links to the poems I choose. If I pick a poem that's not posted anywhere else on the internet, I'll go ahead and post it here. Please follow the links and enjoy the poems. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Now onto the show:

I picked this poem because it's so different from what I've been posting lately. The language is really awesome, and the voice is rich in dialect and sound. I hope you like this one and take the time to listen to the audio version that's to the right of the poem's text. Enjoy!

Railway, by Fred D'Aguiar

This Week in Trashy Reads #15

Trashy Read #15: The Calhouns: Megan's Mate, by Nora Roberts

I actually read Nora Roberts's series of five books about the Calhoun sisters way back in high school. At the time, Megan's Mate (the last in the series), was my favorite. I remember being in love with the hero, the awesomely-named Nathaniel Fury. So when I was in need of some comfort romance (having had my fill of scoundrels and scandals lately), I went straight to this one. It was exactly as I remembered: quick to read, warm, and sweet.

I mentioned last week that I love Nora Roberts because her heroes and heroines are always good people. They might do stupid things or be unintenionally hurtful or stubborn, but deep down, they have big hearts. Occasionally, I like the dangerous, angsty, hard-to-love heroes of historical romances, but in real life, I tend to fall for the hardworking, funny good guys. These are the kind of heroes Nora Roberts always writes.

Nate Fury (seriously, that name is badass) is just one of these good guy types. Abused by his father when he was growing up, he ran off and became a merchant marine as soon as he turned eighteen. He sailed the world and had a good time doing it, but he returns to his hometown to settle down and go into business with the Calhoun sisters and their various husbands. One of those husbands happens to have a little sister who moves to town at the same time to be an accountant for the family hotel. Megan O'Riley is a single mom who doesn't trust men after being burned years ago by a skeezy political type. Obviously, her and Nate fall for each other and much cuteness abounds. The skeezy ex comes back into the picture long enough to have the crap beaten out of Nate and to scare Megan, but the Calhoun family protects their own and it's all taken care of with rainbows and sunshine.

Honestly, this isn't a perfect book. Like the other books in the Calhoun series, it reads too quickly for the reader to get particularly attached to the plot. And Megan is kind of boring. Of course, like most Nora Roberts books, that doesn't matter. Nate Fury is adorable, kindhearted, and great with kids, with a toughness that makes him sexy. He makes the story worth reading. Also, to be fair, Roberts is a pretty decent writer. Her metaphors can be painful at times, and her language isn't exactly fresh or exciting, but she has a fantastic ear for voice. Her dialogue usually sounds like the talk of actual real people, and she refuses to let her characters be lonely. Side characters become great friends, the hero and heroine like each other for more than just their bedroom skills, and people with bad intentions always get their comeuppance. Seriously, Roberts is the most comforting comfortable comfort writer around.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! This year, I am thankful for working at a library and for having a loving family and amazing friends. On the literary side of things, I am thankful for discovering Neil Gaiman, Loretta Chase, and Markus Zusak this year.

Another Winner for Teens (and Everyone Else, Too)

Book Reviewed: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

Once again, it took a teen book to remind me of the importance of literary fiction. The same friend who implored me to read The Book Thief (a new favorite) suggested Sherman Alexie's first teen novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Knowing the book had gotten rave reviews and already knowing that Alexie was a good writer, I decided to finally try it out. As usual, my friend was right.

The book only took me a handful of hours total to read, but it's impact burns long and slow. Funny and wise, fourteen-year-old Junior lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation, and he's being drowned alive there. In order to get a better education and eventually escape the cycle of misery he sees around him, he enrolls at a white high school 22 miles away. His family supports his decision, but they seem to be the only ones. His fellow reservation inhabitants feel abandoned and angry.

Junior ends up living a kind of double life, as a "white" student in a good school and as a "part-time Indian" at the reservation. Alexie handles this duplicity wonderfully. You feel for the poor kid, but you don't hate anyone around him. Somehow, Alexie manages to create a hard world without any outright villains. I was worried that Junior would arrive to the white school only to end up facing ridicule and racism. And he certainly gets some of that there, but eventually he ends up being well-liked by his classmates. He dates a popular girl, becomes a star on the varsity basketball team, and finds an ally in the school genius. He even becomes friends with a senior who terrorizes him his first few days; in a fantastic bonding scene, Junior says: "And Roger, being of kind heart and generous pocket, and a little bit racist, drove me home that night." How can you not love that sentence?!

Despite everything he gains, though, Junior still feels the negative reaction at home. His childhood best friend, an abused and angry kid named Rowdy, refuses to stay friends. Junior feels the loss acutely, and I couldn't help but feel it, too. Of course, this loss and its eventual resolution give the book a central thread that pays off very nicely in the end.

My friend thinks this book should be taught in high schools, and I couldn't agree more. During the first half, it's easy to be charmed by Junior's voice and Alexie's great characterizations. The second half builds on the goodwill of the first half by becoming emotionally devastating. Junior faces a serious of huge and terrible losses, each one more painful than the last. It's heartbreaking and painful, but Alexie plays it just right.

This is one of those seemingly-cliched coming of age stories that rings impossibly true. Junior comes out triumphant in the end, despite what he's been through, and the book ends on a nice, hopeful moment. I enjoyed the whole experience.

Poem of the Week: "Father's Old Blue Cardigan," by Anne Carson

Anne Carson is known as a being a poet of the mind, with all her poems packed full of allusions to Greek myth and ancient literature. A lot of people concentrate on her work's intelligence but forget to comment on the intensely personal aspect of it as well. This poem, "Father's Old Blue Cardigan," is as personal as it gets in poetry. It's a heartbreaker, with an ending that portrays Alzheimer's in a particularly honest and poignant way.

Father's Old Blue Cardigan, by Anne Carson

Now it hangs on the back of the kitchen chair
where I always sit, as it did
on the back of the kitchen chari where he always sat.

I put it on whenever I come in,
as he did, stamping
the snow from his boots.

I put it on and sit in the dark.
He would not have done this.
Coldness comes paring down from the moonbone in the sky.

His laws were a secret.
But I remember the moment at which I knew
he was going mad inside his laws.

He was standing at the turn of the driveway when I arrived.
He had on the blue cardigan with the buttons done up all the way to the top.
Not only because it was a hot July afternoon

but the look on his face --
as a small child who has been dressed by some aunt early in the morning
for a long trip

on cold trains and windy platforms
will sit very straight at the edge of his seat
while the shadows like long fingers

over the haystacks that sweep past
keep shocking him
because he is riding backwards.

Well, This Certainly Didn't Make Me Like Christopher Hitchens Any Better

Book Reviewed: The Best American Essays 2010, edited by Christopher Hitchens (Robert Atwan, series editor)

If I lived in a world of my own choosing, I'd be an essayist. I am always jealous of people who can write really great essays, people like Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris and David Foster Wallace. Instead, essays are quite possibly the literary genre in which I am the most terrible. I have a hard time writing from a distinctive point of view on something I didn't invent or re-imagine. Even worse, I cannot write about myself at all without sounding slightly stupid and extremely passive. But I love reading essays, and great essayists are absolute heroes to me. So I checked out the latest volume of the Best American Essays series.

Man, was I disappointed. I should have stayed away as soon as I saw that Christopher Hitchens was the editor. I think Hitchens is a good writer and very smart, but he often makes me see red. I mean, this is the guy famous for stating that women aren't funny. But I decided to take a chance and read this book anyway.

It wasn't all bad. In fact, some of these essays are quite good. An essay I'd already read and loved earlier this year, Elif Batuman's "The Murder of Leo Tolstoy," started things off nicely. James Wood, one of my favorite serious literary critics, wrote a great essay about George Orwell, entitled "A Fine Rage," which actually made me like Orwell for the first time in my life. Same goes for Ian McEwan's rememberance of John Updike. Steven L. Isenberg's "Lunching on Olympus," talked a bit about Philip Larkin, so you know I enjoyed that one. And of course, as usual, David Sedaris delivers the goods with "Guy Walks into a Bar Car," which has a sweet ending seemingly hand-made for anyone familiar with Sedaris's essays of the last few years.

But the majority of the essays here just seemed really dull. Only five of the twenty-one essays were by women, which didn't help break up the old white man drudge that seemed to drag this book down so much. I particularly disliked Garry Wills's rememberance of the infamous William F. Buckley, in which Wills tried to make Buckley likeable. Good luck. It's hard to like a guy who thought whites were a superior race and who lived to sail. Yuck.

The above-mentioned essays of note, the ones that were genuinely good, made this book worth about half of my reading time. But I probably should have just read the writers and essay topics I knew I'd like and skipped the rest.