Best Left Unread

I am cursed with the need to always finish any novel that I start. It's a strange twist on the completist syndrome. Thus it was that midway through reading Iris Murdoch's novel, The Bell, I found myself writing the following:

It's not as if there was no "there" there - for indeed there was. It's rather that what was there was neither here nor there, neither fish nor fowl, as it were.

Now that was a kind of impressionistic response to what had been increasingly irking me as I turned the pages. Also the style of those sentences was very much in line with the kind of inbred, literary writing that I was reading.

So how did it come to that? I've read some Iris Murdoch before and liked it all, she normally writes perceptive comedies of manners and the like, irony is her thing. Also The Bell came highly recommended to me - by whom I can't remember.

Serious literature was the advertisement but limpid cleverness was all I got.

I should have seen the warning signs when it turned out that the introduction was by A.S. Byatt. Now there's another author who's hit-and-miss. I loved Angels and Insects but what about Possession? That was chock-full with literary in-jokes and mysteries that amounted to a cup of tea. Unbelievably it won the Booker Prize and a Hollywood flick on top of that.

So what then are the ingredients of The Bell?

A lay community is attached to an Abbey. Proximity to the order of enclosed nuns is meant to heighten the titillation quotient. There are errant wives possibly returning to pre-occupied husbands, love triangles, twins, adolescent confusion about the first steps of love, a swirl of homosexuality is in the mix. There are failed priests and schoolboy misunderstandings. Everyone is off balance. People can't decide where they stand or if they stand. I guess it's meant to be unnerving and that you're not supposed to like the characters.

All this sounds vaguely promising but there is neither comedy nor manners, nor much of anything.

Normally this would be a recipe for something akin to a farce. In a different medium and era, this could be like Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown. But no. The denouement when it comes is worth half a smile but not even a chuckle. The inevitable "tragedy" is not tragic. The lessons learned are lost. So what was the point? Or was all this a meta-point about the human condition?

Later on I checked and read that Murdoch was an authority on Sartre and existentialism. That explains something about on why she treats her topics of sex and religion so programmatically. But someone should have warned me. Anyway why go on about it? I finished the novel after all.

Most worrying to me is that I've just gone through a trifecta of books best left unread. This got me thinking: I write a lot about things that I like and occasionally about things that I hate, but what about those things that leave me mostly indifferent? What about the "why did they bother" factor? Shouldn't I be getting bilious about them? After all I invest a fair amount of time in my constant reading. I've got a day job and more worries than I can help.

Consider this post then, an attempt to work myself into a frenzy and remind myself to pick more judiciously in the future. It's fair enough if you dislike, but don't end up indifferent.

Here, to conclude, are a couple more wet socks that should have remained on the unread pile: you won't hate them, but trust me, you won't love them.

The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier

Self-absorbed musicologist and vain opera singer retreating into the Amazon jungle to discover the sounds of lost tribes... Very clever, I suppose. And musical erudition is on display. Also something of a travel journal, Latin American coups and sundry dysfunction abound - a Conrad-like effect is what he's aiming for. It's probably a parable about a return to innocence lost or Eden or something. But did I care? High concept but nigh unreadable. The great cuban writer loses himself... in himself.

Original Bliss by A.L. Kennedy

I felt strangely empty after reading this novel. True, there are blighted and diseased souls and, a priori, they should make for interesting subjects. But just because you write well about deviants and their unlikely relationships with bored housewives doesn't make things meaningful... I wish I could hate it but all I can say is overrated.

Or did I miss the point? Was there actually some "there" there?

File under: literature, obsession, eccentricity, books, hatchet job, reading, Completist Syndrome, toli

On Musical Obsession

If you live with a music lover you'll know that there's something not quite right with them. They're damaged goods.

By music lover I mean 'real' music lovers, the kind that Nick Hornby loving depicted in High Fidelity. The main reason that novel is so loved is its systematic mapping of the emotionally stunted psyche of the 'real' music lover. The novel appears sharp and knowing because, in essence, it's a self portrait; the terrain of musical obsession is Hornby's daily minefield. We all know these music lovers and have to deal with their many foibles. (The book inspired the less funny John Cusack film, I've raised my objections to the film previously).

The 'real' music lover (typically male as empirical evidence shows) is someone who is plumbing the depths of musical obsession, who'll engage you in all sorts of musical obscura, evangelizing some middling (from your point of view) or unfailingly under-promoted (from their point of view) artist; he'll be constantly drawing up Top 10 lists on any topic (desert island disks, best B-side, best break up music, best make up music etc), reorganizing their music collection by genre, alphabetically, by mood, by theme, or by date bought, by girlfriend or by some contrived criteria.

They'll kick you out of their record store because you're looking for Stevie Wonder's I Just Called To Say I Love You, while at the same time furiously insist that MC Hammer's Turn This Mutha Out is the shiznit ("You know Early Hammer was quite revolutionary really"). Their bigotry or unerring snobbishness cannot be questioned.

Of course, in this our iPod and file sharing age, their old standby, the mixtape, is dead and rather it's the playlist that matters. Even if it is easy enough for anyone to download 26 versions of Besame Mucho, on the whole though, most of us are content with shuffle serendipity. Still though, the real music lover has embraced these trends and will put the same craft into turning out playlists or into amassing "The Complete Story of Roxanne", those 103 responses to UTFO's 1985 novelty hit Roxanne, Roxanne.

And so, in addition to my other peculiarities, I plead guilty to musical obsession, to Top-10-listopia, to hearing lyrics everywhere. Others can attest to some of my obvious weaknesses. On any given day, I could be going on about Omar, the Crown Prince of soul music in this our millennial age, or declaiming the virtues of the Johnny Kemp's Secrets of Flying album (unfortunately overshadowed by the swingbeat single Just Got Paid - there's a lot more in there, he's a complete artist) or insisting that the peak of Jam & Lewis's Minneapolis Sound was Alexander O'Neal's Hearsay and Cherelle's Affair album as opposed to their production efforts with SOS Band or the higher selling Janet Jackson joints. And so on...

A month ago, on the Chinatown bus returning from New York after vibing with Abbey Lincoln, my cousin was increasingly irritated with the two loud ghetto women sitting behind us. You know the kind, they just hadn't been socialized: "It's inconsiderate cell phone man" with the urban twist. The loud music - it sounded like a boombox not a walkman, the gooselike laughs at how Meldrick has been dealing with his baby momma, their snide cell phone conversations with Bobo and LaFanqua about distressed, shark-skin jeans (I kid you not) and, the last straw, Cousin Ray-Ray's toe operation.

All of which was interesting to me as a cultural anthropologist of sorts, but even I have to admit that their performance was a rising crescendo for the almost 4 hour trip. When it looked as if my cousin was finally about to lose it (we were still an hour away from Boston) and turn around, fists ready and prepared to take off her heels for the imminent combat, she made the mistake of loudly saying "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" Of course that elicited this from me:

"Oh yes. What Have I Done To Deserve This? I know... Hmmm... From the Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield? That would be late eighties or so... 1987 I think."

I immediately begun singing their mantra:

What Have I, What Have I,
What Have I Done To Deserve This?
What Have I, What Have I,
What Have I Done To Deserve This?

And then I started composing a Top 10 list of songs about irritation or annoyance: some favourites:

• Had Enuff by Al B Sure without a doubt
• Dennis Brown laying down roots reggae on I Can't Stand It
• James Brown - I Can't Stand It (I prefer the Godfather of Soul's 1976 version)
• Stevie Wonder - I Ain't Gonna Stand For It from Hotter Than July
• The Pet Shop Boys and Dusty of course. And so on...

True this outburst served to defuse the tension, but for the whole trip, I had been so lost in my thoughts comparing Abbey Lincoln to Amel Larrieux that I hadn't intervened earlier or nudged our neighbours into toning down their aural invasions.

And musical obsession doesn't only intrude in the mundane as above. I live with 24 hour music, it's pervasive in my mindset, at work, at play, and even in love. I assume that it's especially annoying to "The Girlfriend" when it comes to intimacy. From my point of view though, it makes evident sense to quote the occasional lyric, or four. After all, how can you be original in this day and age? Thousands of years of evolution have brought us to down to this. What haven't men and women said to each other before? What haven't Marvin Gaye, Barry White, Al Green or Luther Vandross, those lotharios of longing, whispered carelessly in the dark. Turn Off The Lights, Teddy Pendergrass insistently demanded; Truly I Adore You, Prince almost leered...

But anyway I try to make the effort at least in affairs of the heart, but it's hard to be original... It's so easy to slip in 'I Love More Than You'll Ever Know' as Donny Hathaway put it... A work in progress...

Just last night again, when the same cousin remarked in passing that her roommate would be away for the next few weeks, I was immediately compelled to start singing Wyclef Jean's Gone 'til November.

See You Must Understand
I Can't Work A Nine To Five
So I'll Be Gone Til November
Said I'll Be Gone Til November.
Yo. Tell My Girl, I'll Be Gone Til November
January, February, March, April, May
I See You Crying But Girl I Can't Stay
I'll Be Gone Til November, I'll Be Gone Til November
And Give A Kiss To My Mother.

Then I started thinking about autumn songs. First the obvious:

• Autumn Leaves. I love Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis's version on Somethin' Else, but you can't dismiss Duke Ellington's take on the Indigos suite, not to mention Bill Evans quiet contemplation of the falling leaves on Portrait In Jazz, and what of Rachelle Ferrelle's performance on that one-off and sadly out-of-print album The Manhattan Project (you know, the one with Wayne Shorter, Michel Petrucciani - that one that I spent $45 for the VHS bootleg, hard bop at its best).
• You'd have to add Autumn in New York but which version? Well Billie Holiday can't be wrong but what about Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's version?
• Not to mention Ben Webster's Early Autumn with his warm saxophone growling as the leaves turned - or is it rather glowing?
• And the vocal perfection of John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman's Autumn Serenade, lyrical tenderness incarnate.

And then onto November songs, what about Kenny Garrett's November 15 from his Songbook? And of course I remembered my favorite November song, Troop's Sweet November

Someday Soon, I Know We'll Come Together.
Even Though I Feel A Change Of Season's Due,
But Maybe Sweet November Will Tell Us A Story
That Will Bring Us Back The Love That We Both Knew.

As you can expect, the conversation degenerated from there on. First she giggled, sighed in exasperation, then just before she hung the phone, pointedly put it:

"There's something not quite right with you, Krantz".

See also

• Found, a playlist
• Annoying, a playlist
• Autumn, a playlist

File under: culture, music, obsession, twisted, soul, observation, damaged, jazz, completist, psychology, life, funny, humour, toli