On Music and Criticism and Music Criticism

So I'm taking this Song as Literature class, not because I'm pretentious and knowledgeable concerning "good music"--in fact I have kinda bad taste, but rather because it's required that I take a senior seminar for my literature major and songs seemed like the smart cop-outty, poetry-like option. WRONG-O. It's hard. And the readings are hard. And I don't like the 1960s anymore. Don't get me wrong, Bob Dylan's my douchebaggy homeboy, Pete Seeger's like my ideological socialist grandfather, and Janis Joplin is who I aspire to be. But reading about the 60s is always so nostalgic and so nauseating. I don't want to deal with the em effing Beatles or the Rolling Stones because I don't care about what they supposedly stood for (which is SEX in bright red capital letters because the 1950s were the most repressive decade ever, so I hear, and we needed break free from The Man).

Anyway, I don't like to read music criticism, especially anything by the late cracked-out Lester Bangs--and yes, "cracked-out" may well be an anachronism in this instance. I think when you write about music and read about music it takes the magic away. It's just opinions and personal preferences and nonsense. Who cares about what your life was like before and after you listened to Astral Weeks? Not this girl. When people write about music, they become nostalgic and jaded. Gross.

I will admit, though, that music is one of the most telling aspects of a culture; we can learn a lot about a decade or a movement or a generation by listening to its music. So this is what I advocate: please, listen to songs. Don't write about them.         Go on, get to it.

***

If you want a little taste of the Bangs' stuff I'm referring to, czech this out. It is, admittedly, one of his better pieces. It takes a more historical approach than "James Taylor Marked for Death," which I wouldn't recommend you read unless you're okay with the cuss words they won't let you say on TV and graphic metaphors.

Oh, and if you want to listen to something really, solidly good that came out of the past, listen to Kris Kristofferson's album Border Lord. I would even suggest buying it. Seriously. My mother has it on vinyl, and oh, it's marvy.

Fleuries, Songbook, and Complaints

It is flurrying in Pittsburgh. (Insert over-used pun on "flurry" and "Fleury" here.) No big surprise there. What is surprising is that there has only been one other time while I've been in this overcast city this season that it has snowed. Honestly, I miss winter. The 'Burgh is out-of-whack because of the weirdly warm weather. The Steelers are not going to the Super Bowl; Pitt basketball is just awful; and the Penguins have lost six games in a row--six!


But on to books: I got the new Philippa Gregory book for Christmas with a Barnes and Noble gift card. I haven't had a chance to read it yet what with all of my grad school applications. This is what it looks like.

So pretty.

For my classes, I'm not reading that many books. Boo, I know. And the ones I am reading suck for the most part. For example, we just read (the great majority of) Songbook by Nick Hornby. I don't even know what to say about it. It was dated, boring, and preachy with the ugliest cover you could possibly imagine. What is the point of an ugly cover? Shouldn't someone fix that somewhere along the line? Doesn't some high-paid idiot (like Buddy's biological father in Elf) get paid a lot of money to make sure that book covers are attractive so that when bookstore browsers, a nearly extinct species, judge books by their covers, they are more likely to pick up a certain book and buy it over another? I'll stop. Without further ado:

Hideous. Doesn't make any sense, either.

That's all I've got for you, reader, at the beginning of this heinous semester.

Some Christmas Carols

As part of my ongoing thought-experiment concerning digital books versus print books, I read A Christmas Carol on my Dad's Kindle, and--oh, reader, I did not prefer that! As I mentioned in my recent, rather secretive, epic blog post--which I subsequently deleted because it wasn't fit to print (think about that paradoxical pun for a hot second)--research has been done that the act of reading on digital media supports a less-deep/more shallow kind of reading, and I have to agree. While reading, I felt like I was being rushed. I don't like knowing what percent of a book I've read! Why can't I just have page numbers and figure it out myself? In other news, I liked A Christmas Carol a lot. I read it in the fifth grade many moons ago, but I pretty much remembered the basic story line from twenty-one years of Christmastime culture. The book was really good: Victorian, Dickensian (obv), meaty enough to have taste but light enough to finish in a day. I particularly liked the little squibs Dickens included about government. Also, the book is heavy on the spirit of Christmas, something in which I think both Christians and Pagans can find celebration.

I would include an image of the book, but because I read it on a Kindle, there is no accurate representation of which version I read (though I'm sure it was unabridged, unillustrated, and out of copyright--it was free, you see). Here's a song, though--in the spirit of this lovely holiday:

It's not important what you celebrate but rather how. I urge you to consider the various reasons for the season, including but not limited to: the winter solstice, Christ's birth, and Saturnalia. Whatever you celebrate, do it merrily!

God bless us, every one.

Musings as I sit in the Elizabethan section of the library...

I'll say what everyone says: this semester has gone by the fastest yet and things are stressful like whoa. Somehow, though, I keep having this feeling of enlightenment. This feeling is fleeting, however, and is quickly replaced by that sensation you have when you're about 75% certain you're going to puke on your shoes. This back and forth between elation and nausea has been my every class. It's exciting to get paper assignments, but also really stressful because every paper you write is proof of your (in)adequacy as a human being. Here's the final paper breakdown:

U.S. Colonial: 10 pager on Slavery? Virginia? the Caribbean? No assignment for this one yet.

Fantasy and Romance:  10 pages-ish about Harry Potter. Guhhhhh.

Seminar: TWENTY-FIVE PAGES ABOUT BOOKS. Literally, books. The material artifact. As in the codex its very self.

Transnational Family: 15 pages of an analysis on the spectacle of pregnancy, namely through the venues of 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom.




Anyway, I read some books:

Moby Dick by my (and Nathanial Hawthorne's) best friend Herman.

I really liked it because it's slow and long and meaty. The cover art though? Disappointment major. Also, Moby's in the news! I have a lot of things to say about this book, most of which are dorky, so I'll spare you. In sum: if you get an extra 2-3 weeks and read about 100 pages per sitting, you'll get it read. If you don't want to read it, learn about it here.



I also read Good Omens by some combination of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

I had the one with the white cover. This is a beach book, a summer book, a fast read, a chuckle, and some poorly written baby-switching. Oh, and the climax was less than I hoped.



In other news, I think I've decided that I want to go to graduate school for Children's Literature. Yikes! Life decisions.

Happy Friday!

Fantasy, History, and Nonsense

As the semester chugs along and I become increasingly more suicidal (not really, Mom), I've read some books. Don't get excited. They are for the most part officially bad books--we're talking fantasy and history here. Gah-ross. I'm going to sum these books up in five sentences or less. Readysetgo.

First, Lilith by George MacDonald.

I did not pay much attention to this book when we talked about it in class. It's about this guy who leaves the real world and gets stuck in a confusing and gross secondary world filled with cat-ladies and children-like things and skeletons and a Raven-man who is also a librarian (??? I know, right). MacDonald was kind of obsessed with repentance, being a minister, and this theme is definitely a major one in the book. Also: the two main characters are women, and one a huge bitch with a lot of power. Maybe MacDonald was trying to make a comment on women's lib, maybe not. I do not recommend this unless you like fantasy. I would say if you like The Golden Compass (which I personally think should be removed from every library in the world and burned), you'll like this poor excuse for a sermon book.

For the Fantasy and Romance class for which I read Lilith, we just finished The Fellowship of the Ring. I liked it. Probably too much because I didn't write in the book. I feel like that interrupts the story, and ruins a perfectly unwritten-in book (more specifically my Dad's copy from the 1970s).

I first read this in middle school when the movie came out. It was the beginning of my love affair with Viggo Mortensen, also known as Liv Tyler's love interest in the movies and my love interest in real life. Anyway, I didn't really remember it. My favorite parts are the parts about hobbits. I love hobbits and descriptions of them. I could read about Bilbo and Frodo's joint birthday party forever. But that's because my favorite things to read are boring, long books with slow, yet moving plots. Like Jane Eyre. So, I really liked that about this book, not so much the descriptions of land and the geography of a certain Madeupplace, but thanks for trying John Ronald Reuel. The thing about these books is that once you read them, you hold J.R.R. up to be some sort of fantasy god--which he totally is--and most other fantasy books transfigure into cheap and trashy paperback editions of Twilight in your hands before you can even get through the first chapter. Also, this series sort of disintegrates the magic of the Harry Potters. Even the Whomping Willow is borrowed from Tolkien--the freaking Whomping Willow! Though this kind of disappointment is stressful to a psyche built entirely upon Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I'm still of the camp that remains appreciative of Rowling's work, and doesn't blame her entirely for every coincidental (or not) likeness between the two series. Those pesky tropes.

Third book: The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell.

This book is supposed to be a hip and with-it approach to the history of the Pilgrims. You know, the ones who sailed to the New World in hopes of religious freedom blah blah yada yada? Well, I honestly found this book less interesting than my history textbook for the class. She's funny sometimes, and I chucked and shared bits with the roommates a couple times, but it's just not my cuppa tea. If you're really interested in the Pilgrims, check out Major Problems in American Colonial History, and you won't have to deal with Vowell's "sense of humor" and political agenda.

 Last and definitely least there's this book. I honestly rolled my eyes just then, thinking about it.

I'm telling you, this book is a hipster's dream and my worst nightmare. It has redeeming qualities including that some pages only have a couple words on them and every time the word "house" appears in any language, it's in blue. It's interesting but it tries way too hard to be some sort of newfangled book. It's too long and has multiple fonts. There are stories within the endnotes--the long, long endnotes, some of which are made up. It might be worth reading because it's part of a new theorizing of the book (or something equally as clever or profound). But, it's definitely rated NC-17 for terrifyingness and overt sexual content.




Okay, so I failed at the five sentence thing.

A brief note on the chosen book covers:

I've been trying my best to provide the book covers that are the same as the book I read. Why? Because I judge every book by its cover and so should you. There is no excuse for an ugly book cover anymore, but they still happen. Take Lilith for example, the cover for the one I read was busy, purple, and very unromantic. Look what it could have been:

These would have been so much better to read because they have pretty ladies on the front! Very pre-Raphaelite.

The Primer, Reality Hunger, and the President

I've only read two books since I went back to school: The New England Primer (which, thank-you-very-much, was an answer I got right while watching Jeopardy! two days ago) and Reality Hunger by David Shields. The Primer is pretty self-explanatory: it's an early, intrinsically American textbook, containing ABC pictures and little prayers, etc. Examples:

David Shields' book, is a whole different thing, however. It's...brace yourself...creative. On the whole, I don't love the book and after dissecting it for its (maybe?) true purposes in class, I can't bear to hate it. Basically, Shields is interested in appropriation, collective art, collage, and breaking conventions. He says that he's sick of novels and plays with broad concepts like memory, interpretation, and culture. The most exciting thing about the book is that his bibliography is less than thorough, and he suggests that you cut the pages with the cited sources out on the dotted lines. They actually have dotted lines. Both charming and annoying are the chapter headings which are all letters of the alphabet--one of the few similarities the text shares to the Primer. The chapters are broken into "passages" which range from deep one-liners to extensive lists. I'd recommend borrowing it from the library instead of purchasing your own copy because you might really, really like how he deconstructs the rules of the academic academy. Or, you might think he's a little too pretentious to have so many books on sale.

And on to a semi-unrelated subject: The President.

The president of the United States addressed Congress and the country tonight. Did you watch it? Probably not because Americans seem to have given up on politics. We say politicians are corrupt. We say there's nothing we can do to change things. We say politicians don't use their power to change things. Whatever. I think that is the wrong way to think about the situation, but I'll digress because that isn't what I wanted to talk about. I want to talk about the monumental changes that have taken place in our country since its start. Warning: things are about to get sentimental.

At the start of this country, Europeans justified racism against the indigenous population in part due to their technological "superiority". They justified racism against Africans stolen for slavery in a similar way, even developing a "science" to find whites to be the intellectually superior "race". And I know it took too long for the slaves to be freed. And I know it took too long for African Americans to get the right to vote. And I know it took way to long for schools to be desegregated. But look, the fact that the people of this country elected a black man to be president is something monumental, especially when considering the bigotry, racism, and prejudice that shape the United States today and have shaped the Americas  since the time of Columbus and the Conquistadors.

When I watched the speech tonight I was overcome with emotion because of huge change. You can rant and rave about how Obama hasn't done anything he promised to do or about how politics is a waste of time, but there has been change under the latest president, and it has been a great change in the moral constitution of this country.

Frustrated with politics? Check out this website as hope for the future.

7th semester, etc.

College has started and it's oh-so-bittersweet. I'm taking about 18 credits too many, and auditing a class. But look, I only have one semester left after this and I just can't let college pass me by. In order to complete my 37 various major, minors, and certificates, I'm taking the following:

History:
United States Colonial

Literature:
Junior Seminar
Fantasy and Romance
American Literature to 1860
Childhood's Books (auditing)

Anthropology: 
Transnational Families
Forensic Anthropology

Things I'll be reading include stuff like Roald Dahl's The Witches, Various Harry Potters, Lord of the Rings, David Shield's Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, Moby Dick, and things by various other poets, authors, and idiots.

In other news, I have read almost nothing since my Little House on the Prairie jaunt. It's just: Things have been so busy between putting together our mess of an apartment, going to class, and stealing a desk off the street. And, I am probably the worst English major ever because after reading all day and all night, I don't feel like reading "for pleasure"; I'd rather play Rock Band or go to Hofbrauhaus with the roommates. Judge me all ye readers, article-writers, and English majors, I do not care.

There's also the looming graduate school question. I'm taking the GRE in September (good goo it is September) but besides that I don't know what the next step is. Maybe study children's lit or get my master's in education? Maybe fart around for a year? Yeah, no rush or anything though. It's just my future.