tommy - Invisible Hitchcock

Thanks Jon!

ALSO! does anyone other than Carl Douglas sing "Kung Fu Fighting", I can't find it on iTunes.

I think Robyn Hitchcock does... or maybe I'm thinking of some other '70s novelty song he covered.

I got it off musicmatch, but thanks.

Go Down, Moses is actually my favorite Faulkner, hayden (hence my email address), but A!A! is right there. "Wash" pairs nicely with "Barn Burning," too (which reminds me that it *is* available online -- because I put it there when I led an alumni seminar on the two), very similar themes & a number of scenes that echo one another. One of the advantages to reading an author's work as a totality, especially someone like Faulkner, is seeing his obsessions and seeing him search for the right vehicle to frame the story he wants to tell. The central conflict in Faulkner, it seems to me, is his profound love of his land and its people coupled with an unblinking yetnuanced recognition of its past and present sins (his language, but I concur). When Wash Jones belatedly acquires that clear vision it destroys him: "Better that all who remain of us be blasted from the face of earth than that another Wash Jones should see his whole life shredded from him and shrivel away like a dried shuck thrown onto the fire." He commits de facto suicide; Quentin actually kills himself. The young Sarty Snopes flees because he can't process what he now knows (including his complicity: do what's "right" and destroy his father or maintain the status quo and become part of the problem.) Ike McCaslin is Sarty grown up yet stuck in stasis and ineffectiveness, repudiating his legacy but ultimately realizing it can't be escaped. "The Bear" gives us Faulkner's extraordinary imagery of why the "past isn't even past": the New World was a new Eden and we poisoned it by chattel slavery (among other things). The sweat of the slaves watered the crops they tended, cotton and food, the former providing the money which built the society, the latter providing the nourishment for all who lived there -- America's Original Sin, the South's "curse," literally was ingested and became part of everyone who lived there, and their ancestors continued to drink from the poisoned well.

As you can see Faulkner gets me a little worked up. This is the music thread, so I'll stop. The Table Talk Faulkner thread is how I ended up here, and the Book of the Month I started with was A!A!. Guy running the thread didn't know what he was talking about, but it was fun anyway.

Love Melville. Respect but don't dig Pynchon. Eliot and I occasionally yell "Fickt nicht mit der Raketemensch!" at each other, but I want more than one tagline out of a 900 page book. I will say, though, that in the aftermath of 9/11, especially with the war in Afghanistan, and now with the "peace" (or at least post-"cessation of hostilities") in Iraq, I've had the urge to re-read the whole "In the Zone" section. Haven't done it, but still feel the urge. I will admit that I haven't put nearly the work into Pynchon that I did with Faulkner, and I'll stipulate that the former is much smarter than the latter -- though I think that F is the far greater artist. In a nutshell, I think the difficulty in Faulkner arises from his struggle to find an appropriate narrative technique to tell the stories he wants (one that conveys the struggle in his stories and characters), whereas I think Pynchon is willfully obscure and wants to dazzle his audience with how smart he is. I'm not saying there's not more to it than that, but I don't feel like putting in the work to get more out of it.

And now for <fanfare> music! Do you like/are you familiar with Jim Hall, hayden? With a few exceptions I'm not much of a jazz guitar fan, but Hall is one of the exceptions. And he's playing at the Vanguard this week & I think I'll go see him.

does anyone other than Carl Douglas sing "Kung Fu Fighting",

Yep -- Robyn covered it on a benefit comp called Alvin Lives (In Leeds).

"Kung Fu Fighting"

One of the first records I ever bought. There were funky Chinamen from funky Chinatown/They were chopping them up, they were chopping them down. Love that stuff.

You know, that's a little bit frightening....

Calexico - The Black Light

Love this band, but I think that's one of their albums that I don't have.

Edited post 2453. Added Dillard & Clark. Should also have added Kelly Hogan's Beneath The Country Underdog.

Joe: I got in on the tail end of the A!A! discussion, but everyone had already talked about my obsessions with the book. I loves me some Faulkner, too, and your above rant is going to lead me back to "Barn Burning," which I haven't read in nigh unto 10 years. The first time I read it was in high school, and it was the first time that I realized that despite all my book-learning, I didn't know shit about real writing. Light In August was next.

In a nutshell, I think the difficulty in Faulkner arises from his struggle to find an appropriate narrative technique to tell the stories he wants (one that conveys the struggle in his stories and characters), whereas I think Pynchon is willfully obscure and wants to dazzle his audience with how smart he is.

Well, I agree that Pynchon is willfully obscure, but I think that's the point of his writing -- that the real action happens at a level that is either so large or so small that the characters can't see it. It's not dazzle for the sake of proving his smarts; it's concise scientific worldview underlying a nonlinear (dare I say postmodern? I dare!), postmodern storyline. Like in both F & M (and Nabokov, to be fair), the digressions tell the story better than the main action.

Like in both F & M (and Nabokov, to be fair), the digressions tell the story better than the main action.

That's definitely how I read Moby Dick. People that complain about all the discursive whaling lore make me throw up my hands in despair. "But that's the point!" Or rather Melville puts you so deeply into that seafaring world, the metaphors take on richness and depth that wouldn't be possible without all the stuff floating around. Plus he stuck a one-act play in the middle. Plus that fantastic scene in the beginning with the church of the sea. Plus the HoYay, and the almost superhero team of harpooners.

Jilli! I'm listening to your new favorite album, Jill Tracy's Diabolical Streak. It's like a female Tom Waits (in his more melodic mid-eighties days) as backed by Rasputina.

Got four CDs from CDBaby at my desk today. Sweet.

Also, totally chuffed because I've swung a trade for super rare glam in exchange for rare bubblegum. Oh yeah.