Welcome to There There Kid

Welcome to There There Kid. Obviously, this is our first post, and we won't be up and running for a month or so as we sort out the format, etc.

However, this blog will be a mixed media blog that brings together many different forms of art, placing the works within their cultural contexts. After all, art doesn't occur within a vacuum, and we hope to reveal the undercurrents of culture that shape our art.

I hope to use my experience with literature, music, art, and criticism to create a blog that mixes all of these elements together. For example, can we find links between a current novel and a popular indie rock album? When a musician says they read X, does it come out in that musician's song lyrics?

In addition, I'd like to add reviews and features that probe deeper into topics than the average review site.

Keep checking back as we update the site and add more useful stuff to it.

Review: The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia

Before you even open the disc or listen to a single second of the album, The Gutter Twins' debut release Saturnalia speaks to you through its striking album cover. The cover is a photo showing classic urban prairie, an abandoned lot between two shotgun houses, where the greenery only grows as weeds between the cracks of a neglected sidewalk and life seems to have gone underground. Two chairs sit in the center of the photo, and behind that, a dark, cloudy sky looms over the scenery and reflects off a dead tree.

Yet, there's something alive about the album cover. It draws you in and forces you to face the realities of humanity, and that life is not always beautiful and serene.

It's been a while since I've seen an album cover so succinctly describe the mood and tone of the music on the album itself. Even the two chairs — which are probably empty because the two members of The Gutter Twins are off recording this excellent album — speak of something profound. Is it abandonment? Poverty? A political message, possibly conjuring the images of destruction in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Who knows...

Fortunately, the album cover is only one small aspect of why this album moves me. The Gutter Twins have created music that, at every listen, reveals some minor nuance I missed the time before. It's an emotionally and musically complex album, and one of the best to come out this year (so far).

The Gutter Twins are composed of two former '90's music powerhouses — Mark Lanegan of the Screaming Trees and Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs — and, I have to admit, I was initially skeptical that this combination would work. While I enjoyed The Afghan Whigs back in the day, I was never a fan of the Screaming Trees, and these two lead singers seemed worlds apart to me.

However, Saturnalia shows that these two musicians are a perfect match. While the album moves through many different styles and genres, it remains a unified collection of songs that speak to many different emotions and situations. Plus, it's a musically strong collection that flows from track to track, and hints at what's to come on future releases.

Saturnalia kicks off with "The Stations," a great starting point for this album, as it seems to summarize the mood of the entire album. Dulli and Lanegan share writing credits and vocals for this song; on most of the other songs, Dulli and Lanegan have split up the song writing and recording. "The Stations" captures an airy atmosphere through its reverberating guitars and backing strings, suggesting a maturity in sound as these two grunge masters have grown up. Lanegan sings of a blended religiosity and hope for the future ("I hear the rapture's coming / They say he'll be here soon / Right now there's demons crawling all around my room"), but he also sings of confusion ("Don't know what they mean").

"The Stations" transitions well into "God's Children," and the album's first half starts to take shape. It's full of melancholic ambiguity, and the Lanegan/Dulli mashup expresses this ambiguity best. "All Misery/Flowers," for example, expresses the need to "hold on" while it also suggests an end: "Let's ride suicide / Say what you want, but you make it, don't lie." The religious ambiguity is also used for stylistic effect, and the blues/R&B influences of these two artists shows through, both in their vocal styles and in their lyrical themes.

Saturnalia takes a turn with "Circle the Fringes," another Dulli/Lanegan composition rife with strings and growing atmosphere. The album becomes more inward looking, suggesting inner turmoil rather than social concerns. On "Who Will Lead Us?" Lanegan moves through a spiritual ballad that leans on the musician's blues influences. The call-and-response between the guitar and the vocal styles is pure blues, but it's still tinged with the loud guitars brooding in the background. Lanegan calls out, as if to God, saying: "I think the chariot is coming / And if it should please you Lord / I give this trumpet up to Gabriel." Other tracks, like "I Was In Love With You" (a Dulli composition), focus more on personal relationships rather than spiritual concerns.

The album ends by tying up the loose ends left at the beginning of the album. Stylistically, songs like "Each to Each" and "Front Street" bring back the loudness brewing beneath the airy atmosphere that defines this album. Equally, there is more partnership between the two musicians, and on "Front Street," the album ends with the same thoughts that the album cover initially brings up: "Front Street ain't a place for a boy who / Likes to talk ways that boys do / Unstrung, young, dumb, comfortably numb." It conjures up an image of a boy in the street behind the camera who has yet to grow up and face the world, yet it also speaks to some of the most basic human concerns of adulthood.

There's no doubt that The Gutter Twins have something going for them, and Saturnalia is an excellent start. Don't expect these two '90's stars to stick to old clichés. Instead, expect an album that both reflects originality and a reflected sense of maturity. I have a feeling we may be talking about Saturnalia for years to come.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/11/193631.php

Review: Things Fall Apart, 50th Anniversary Edition by Chinua Achebe

Fifty years ago, Africa was a continent struggling to find identity and freedom, despite centuries of control and change that destroyed the cultures of a diverse group of people. As Africa struggled to free itself from colonial rule in the second half of the 20th century, there were many who wondered if Africa could survive in the industrial age and move beyond colonialism.

In 2008, it's hard to say whether Africa's independence from colonial rule has resulted in freedom. It has certainly allowed many nations, such as Nigeria and South Africa, to compete globally, but it has also left many others in the throes of poverty, genocide, and war. As African nations found their independence throughout the '60's and '70's, many hoped Africa would become a new world superpower, but it never happened. It has been a tumultuous time, and Africa continues to struggle with the scars left by colonial rule.

Recognizing Africa's struggles between the traditions of the past and the turmoil left by colonialism, Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart shows how these struggles are not always simple to understand. Originally published in 1958, Things Fall Apart has become a modern classic, and a 50th anniversary edition was released this month to celebrate the novel's lasting impact.

Things Fall Apart follows Okonkwo, a village leader who becomes one of the most powerful men in Umuofia, his ancestral village. As Okonkwo strives to rise from obscurity to importance, he brings along with him the traditions that his village requires of him. Even though Okonkwo faces hardship throughout the novel, Achebe shows us that the cultural expectations and beliefs of this region are complex and difficult to understand, but more powerful than the Western world portrays it, especially in 1958.

Okonkwo's rise to a powerful position in Umuofia also reveals the struggles of a man torn apart by a multiplicity of emotions, and Okonkwo faces these throughout the novel. At one point, Okonkwo breaks the customs of Umuofia, and Okonkwo and his family are exiled from the village for seven years. Okonkwo is forced to start over, and he does so, building his power and manhood back.

Achebe's novel takes an interesting turn when Okonkwo returns to Umuofia, and he finds a village changed by outside forces. British missionaries have set up a Christian church in the village, and are trying to convert the villagers to Christianity. While many of the villagers convert to the new religion, Colonial forces take over the political and cultural beliefs and customs of the region, and Okonkwo, a man rooted in the traditions of the past, feels lost. Instead of portraying the British empire as the enemy and the villagers as the heroes, Achebe puts these political changes within their historical context; it becomes clear that the events take place at the height of Victorian Britain, and the fervor surrounding the Colonial government becomes a fact that Okonkwo must face. By showing the nuances and multiple customs and traditions that Okonkwo knew as a young man, Achebe shows how difficult it is for Okonkwo to face these outside forces.

In the end, Okonkwo won't face them with honor. Achebe then shows how complicated Colonial Africa has become, that it is a region full of turmoil that will last for years to come. In 1958, a time of change for post-colonial Africa, Things Fall Apart became a way for Africans to respond to their colonists, and in the decades after its publication, the novel would represent why change in the region was so necessary.

Now that fifty years have passed, Things Fall Apart is still an important novel because of its complex portrayal of colonialism. Although the novel seems simple at face value, it shows how difficult it is to overcome centuries of colonial rule that uprooted so many people and customs, and left them at the mercy of corporate and political greed. Achebe doesn't paint a black and white world when he describes Okonkwo's struggles; instead, he shows that things are difficult to fix once they have been broken.

Africa may one day become the prosperous world power that seemed possible fifty years ago, as nation after nation found their independence from colonial rule. Achebe's novel shows that it's too difficult to view Africa from one perspective, and the story will remain a powerful force in African literature.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/01/123602.php

Review: Ralph Ellison - A Biography by Arnold Rampersad

Ralph Ellison began his life in Oklahoma in 1913, an area far removed from the cultural changes happening in America and an area that, despite its promise of a new life, still held blacks in the throes of Jim Crow racism. As a child, Ralph desired more from the America he grew to love and respect, and he would reach new heights through an unwavering love for the arts, especially jazz; he saw musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington as heroes because they made it into the heart of American society, despite their skin color (later, in his novel Invisible Man, Ellison's unnamed narrator would also find solace in Armstrong's music).

Ralph would eventually get there. His life ended in 1994 as a man who overcame odds against him as a kid to become a literary icon whose novel Invisible Man is still revered today. He was a man who always set the bar high, and despite accomplishing much in his life, he never finished the second novel he always promised would be a novel about the African-American experience that would rival Faulkner and Melville. In many ways, Invisible Man became that novel, and Ellison's short stories, essays and literary criticism would become standards for reading America and American literature.

It was the second novel that would always weigh on Ellison's mind. With his heightened expectations, the novel would fall under the weight of prestige and fame. Ellison also became the victim of time, and the longer he waited to bring his novel out, the more America--and, therefore, Ellison's expectations of America--changed. He would blame everything from writer's block "as big as the Ritz," the changing cultural expectations of black writers, and a house fire in 1967 that Ellison claimed destroyed the majority of his novel.

In Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad, the myths surrounding Ellison is finally rebuffed. Rampersad's biography digs deep into every event surrounding Ellison's career, and strikes a balance between his personal demons and his public persona without placing the writer on a pedestal. Ellison is shown not only as an intelligent voice for his generation, but also as a man prone to anger and a man who stubbornly stuck to what he knew to be true.

Rampersad begins his story by looking into Ellison's tumultuous childhood in the segregated Oklahoma City, where his mother raised him and his younger brother Herbert with the help of neighbors and friends (his father died early in Ellison's life when a shard of ice stabbed him in the stomach after lifting a block of ice). He recalls the difficulties of Jim Crow in Oklahoma; at one point, Ellison's mother was turned away from the city zoo with both her sons, embarrassed by the white security guard. Rampersad does not just focus on Ellison's career, but shows how Ellison's early years helped shape his literature.

When Ellison grows up and heads to college, Rampersad shows a life that closely reflected Ellison's fiction, especially his most famous novel Invisible Man. Ellison's time at Tuskegee, and his reasons for leaving the institution, shape how the narrator of Invisible Man will form his own identity. Rampersad sweats the small details, showing the progression Ellison took as he moved to Harlem in the 1930's and became a writer. Writers such as Langston Hughes and Richard Wright directly influenced Ellison's desire to write a great novel, even though Ellison would later distance himself from these writers due to his changing political beliefs. Rampersad also tracks Ellison's political evolution, from Communist sympathizer in the 1930's to moderate Democrat in the 1960's and beyond. In Invisible Man, Ellison's narrator would make a similar political change, albeit on a smaller level. Indeed, Ellison's fiction was often closely linked to his own changes.

Rampersad's exhaustive research also reveals a man who was prone to arrogance and, as a result, was often viewed as out of touch with modern American literature, especially in the ever changing 1960's. While Ellison worked night and day on the novel that would rival Faulkner (that he ultimately never finished), a new perspective on race relations, especially among blacks, emerged. Ellison was stuck between two conflicting worlds: a white America that accepted Ellison and allowed him to move up in society, and a black America that accused Ellison of being an "Uncle Tom." Ellison never backed down; despite younger writers seeing him as out of touch with the struggles of the modern world, Ellison always believed that race relations were more complex than black versus white, and that African-American culture was distinctly American. As he aged and black radicalism subsided, many young scholars turned back to Ellison's words, and his view of America endures today.

Perhaps the most interesting section of Rampersad's biography is his mention of the 1967 fire that destroyed Ellison's Plainfield, Mass. estate. What is interesting about this event is how minor it truly was. As Ellison continued to labor away with his novel-in-progress, he would claim to those who asked him that most of it was destroyed in the fire, and therefore spent years trying to re-write the novel from memory. The truth, according to Rampersad, was that Ellison lost only a small portion of the novel, since most of the novel was left at his home in Harlem. The novel was never finished or published during his lifetime because Ellison fell under the weight of it, as it grew to be well over 1,000 pages long without any real direction. Later, a portion of the novel would become Juneteenth, published posthumously (the rest of the novel is supposed to be published later this year).

Rampersad ends his biography with Ellison's 1994 death. Suffering from pancreatic cancer, Ellison went peacefully at his Harlem apartment. While listening to a Louis Armstrong song, Ellison signaled to his wife Fanny that the song was perfect, suggesting that Ellison, even on his deathbed, still regarded jazz as one of the most important experiences of his American adventure.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography is an excellent look at a man and a career that, despite its ups and downs, deserves respect. Although he faced his critics (sometimes head on) with a bullish attitude, it was done because of his true belief that America would endure. Although he never finished the second novel he always promised, Invisible Man and his collections of literary and cultural criticism have become classics. Rampersad's exhaustive research leaves nothing behind, revealing a conflicted man who still knew what he ultimately wanted, an integrated America that recognized a multiplicity of views, and in many ways, he got just that.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/02/21/144546.php

Review: Drew Gress - The Irrational Numbers

Unlike many other musical styles, jazz stands out as a genre that can easily tap into the deep crevices of the mind, digging up deeply held emotions and feelings. Stylistically, it is ready to express many ideas at once, to reveal the subtle feelings and nuanced thoughts that aren't always seen at the surface.

Most modern jazz musicians recognize this, and with this knowledge comes the challenge to move listeners in deep, meaningful ways. Any true jazz fan knows that jazz is not just here to entertain or create pretty sounds (in fact, a lot of jazz isn't too pretty), but that it is here to express and reflect the inner movements and expressions of the mind.

Which brings jazz musician Drew Gress into the conversation, a man who truly knows how to use each instrument and every improvisational technique to the greatest emotional effect. In his latest, The Irrational Numbers, Gress knows that his bass-driven jazz digs deep into, as Jack Kerouac said in his novel On The Road, the "pit and prune juice " of the human experience. The Irrational Numbers does just this, taking its listeners on a complex journey of highs and lows experienced at the peaks of mountains and the crevices of caves.

At first listen, The Irrational Numbers is hard to take in, bringing in equal amounts of dissonance and beautiful melodies. Every musician goes off on their own improvisational techniques, digging deep into their own personal feelings in order to bring together the group as a whole. At times, Gress' sound becomes jangled and discordant, but just as he goes off on a tangential riff, he brings the group back to a more unified, conventional sound.

The album starts off with "Bellwether," a short introductory song that highlights the more subdued elements of the rest of the album. With Ralph Alessi's muted trumpet and Gress' bass motifs carrying the rhythm and melody, "Bellwether" is a way for the band to say "we're here" and for the listener to wake up.

Once Gress has us listening attentively with "Bellwether," he gets right into it with "Chevelle," a fast moving and, at times, dissonant song that brings in the whole band. "Chevelle" begins with pounding beats and discordant piano chords. When the horns come in, there is a frantic pace, as each musician improvises on top of the riffs holding the rhythm together, including Gress' bass (here, Gress takes a step back, letting the other musicians take solos). Eventually, "Chevelle" breaks through the madness, and comes to a more conventional jazz technique. At the end, the piano (along with Gress' electronic instruments) brings the rest of the band back down to a beautiful, ethereal moment on the album.

The rest of The Irrational Numbers continues in this way. On "Your Favorite Kind," alto saxophonist Tim Berne riffs along with Alessi's trumpet, juxtaposing each other with fast, technical solos. Gress also reasserts his bass prowess, moving his fingers along the fingerboard as fast as he can. On "Fauxjobim," the band starts off with the same subdued sound of "Bellwether," carries that to the end while drummer Tim Rainey improvs all over the place.

The Irrational Numbers has a way of drawing the listener in, as if the album is one continuous stream of sound. In fact, this is the type of album you can get lost in, not realizing there's a new song every few minutes. By the end of the album, Gress has you wanting more. Throughout the album, Gress also hearkens back to the motifs at the beginning of the album, like the subdued chorus of "Bellwether" and the chaotic moments of "Chevelle." In this way, the whole album feels like it's telling a story through sound. As "Blackbird Backtalk" fades out to the next track "By Far," for example, Gress has taken you into a fiery chaos and then left you in an icy sea, and you must find your way out. And then, on "That Heavenly Hell," you are back to chaos and confusion, as the saxophone and piano fight each other for your attention. It builds to a climax and then leaves you with "True South," a slower track that rounds out the album and goes back to the control and beauty of "Bellwether."

Gress also shows off his bass skills when you least expect it. On "Mas Relief," a short song that lulls you into the bombastic "That Heavenly Hell," Gress riffs along on his bass with a few keyboard effects in the background. It's a beautiful song that shows Gress doesn't always need to fall behind his band; his powerful talent on bass alone can hold a song together.

The Irrational Numbers shows that Gress is willing to delve deep into the recesses of the mind to move listeners. At times, the music moves into chaos, and then within a split second everything seems back to normal. Gress displays a strong command of jazz while showing that the bass can still reign supreme when everything is done right. Overall, The Irrational Numbers is a great album that is worth every second.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/02/20/164619.php

Best Song of 2007

Narrowing down the year's best songs into a fashionable list is a difficult task to take on. It's bad enough trying to figure out this year's best albums, and it's even more difficult to pick out individual songs, especially picking a single song that makes the whole year shine.

As we wrap up 2007, however, there's one song that sticks out to me more than any other. It's a song that's meant more to me than any other this year, and it's a song that I feel summarizes the reasons why I fell in love with music. For some reason, all of the pieces to this song just fit so well.

Appropriately enough, Radiohead's "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" is my choice for 2007's song of the year. It is, in my opinion, Radiohead's climactic peak artistically and musically, a song that ties in everything Radiohead has done and everything Radiohead has yet to do. It borrows from the past while reveling in the present, and suggests what is to come: a band that has recognized a new musical phase and is ready to reach new heights.

My first experience with Radiohead goes back to the summer of 2001. I was seventeen and, thanks to my Dad's job that took our family overseas, I was living in England. The escape from my mundane life in Central Illinois was a welcome change, but I was experiencing constant culture shock and felt particularly isolated and alone that summer. Luckily, I had my guitar and a four-track recording system I borrowed from a neighbor friend, and tons of time after school to write and record various songs I had written over the years. It was a time in my life where I finally started to take music seriously, enjoying bands like Pink Floyd and Pearl Jam (my favorite at the time) with more depth and understanding than ever before. I finally saw rock music as more than just a release from the mundane or a call to social rebellion, but as a true art form, and one that can entirely move the soul.

It was around that time that I borrowed a taped recording of Radiohead's sophomore release The Bends, and it completely changed my view of the band that, at the time, was making computer noises on Kid A and Amnesiac (I have since fallen in love with these two albums, but at the time I couldn't stand them). The Bends was different: its combination of loud guitars and atmospheric noise stuck with me, and I couldn't have enough of the album. I spent the rest of that summer writing bad ripoff songs that sounded too much like "My Iron Lung" and "Fake Plastic Trees," but it wasn't the music itself that got me through that melancholy summer, it was the act of discovery--finding something completely new, something I'd never heard before, that I could call my own.

Since then, Radiohead has become one of my favorite bands. With their incredible mix of visual art with atmospheric noises and orchestral compositions, Radiohead has become a band that goes beyond genre restrictions and fan expectations. They are a band willing to try new things, to forge new paths, and stay completely accessible to discerning music listeners.

Radiohead's In Rainbows has been all over the place recently. It took the number one spot for several prominent music year end lists, and for others, it stayed within the top ten. The best part about the album is that, despite the unconventional pay-what-you-want marketing, In Rainbows is better known for its incredible music, which of course is what all the hype is about. At the beginning of the album's opening track, singer Thom Yorke declares "how come I end up where I started," suggesting that the band has finally come full circle and is ready to step out to newer ground.

Buried towards the end of the album, In Rainbows reaches a climax with "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," and it's at this moment, when the acoustic guitars come in and drummer Phil Selway holds the strong rhythmic beat together, that Yorke's earlier declaration finally makes sense: the pieces all fit, the jigsaw has truly fallen into place.

The best part about "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" is its amazing syncopation. The acoustic guitars give way to a tight drum beat, which bring in Yorke's airy vocals and guitarist Johnny Greenwood's stratospheric electric guitar riffs. It's a style that brings us back to Radiohead's early days, when they were seen as just another '90's "grunge" band with their debut album Pablo Honey. Yet, at the same time, the band is tighter, more mature; age and the musical diversity of their collective works have brought the band to this moment when they can look back at it all and throw it at the wall to see what happens. Of course, it all just fits so well.

Lyrically, "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" seems to tell two stories at once: a narrative about lost love at a bar and the subjective feelings that the music brings. Like a poem by Frank O'Hara, the lyrics show desperation, happiness, and confusion surrounding an otherwise mundane moment in time, and it is this poetic "swirl" that makes the lyrics come alive fully. Yorke sings: "Before you run away from me / Before you're lost between the notes / The beat goes round and round" as if everything is "blurring into one." And, of course, the music seems to blur everything that Radiohead has done together into one place, one exceptional moment in time. At one point, everything becomes "lost between the notes," something that Radiohead has done for years with their minimalist musical compositions (think "How to Disappear Completely" from Kid A and you'll see what I mean).

The guitar work on "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" is also significant because it is the first song I've heard since OK Computer that makes full use of Radiohead's three guitarists. Back in the Pablo Honey days, having three guitarists was seen as an unnecessary excess, but on "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," three guitars are exactly what is needed. While the first acoustic guitar comes in with a complex, finger-picked riff, the second acoustic guitar comes in to carry the rhythm while the bass guitar fills in the gaps. It builds from there, and by the time Yorke is letting the beat go "round and round," the atmospheric electric guitars have taken over, flinging the song out into its own orbit. By the end of the song, Radiohead have created a song that has the same musical effect that Led Zeppelin's "Song Remains the Same" did to restore their musical bravado at the beginning of Houses of the Holy.

When the song finally comes to an end, you don't feel that it's been overdone, or that the band has struggled through it. Instead, the song feels like an organic work, and there's not a single moment that drags with boring interludes. It builds up to a climax, and leaves you wanting more. In Rainbows then fades into its own denouement with "Videotape," bringing you back down and resolving all that had built into a frenzy before it.

Even if this was all I had to say about "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," it would still be one of my favorite songs. But what makes it stand out as the best song of 2007 is the same feeling The Bends gave me during that lonely summer in 2001: it renews my sense of wonder for music. "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" truly moves my soul in ways that most music never can, and every time I listen to it, I never find a dull moment or a single way to criticize it. It will, for years to come, remind me of 2007 and all of the joy this year's new music gave me. For that reason alone, "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" is my pick for the best song of 2007.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/01/01/211645.php

Book Review: Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias Freese

If there's one thing we share collectively as human beings, it is the growth and maturity experienced through childhood and early adulthood. While everyone may have different experiences, childhood has certainly been the subject for countless writers throughout the ages. Whether it's James Joyce's Stephen Daedalus or Charles Schultz's Charlie Brown, artists have tried to make sense of their childhood while explaining essential parts of human experience.

In Down to a Sunless Sea, Mathias Freese delves into the darker aspects of childhood through 15 excellent stories. Freese's protagonists share dark secrets and tragic experiences, but by the end of each story, Freese leaves the reader with a sense of empathy for his young protagonists. They all deal with the things that plague young men in the 20th century (and beyond), such as shaving, making sense of friendship, parental abuse, and sexual desire, yet Freese's stories tackle these subjects head-on, giving each character depth and perspective beyond an idealistic view of childhood.

Freese allows his characters to speak for themselves, but uses his own experiences as a social worker to shape each character. In "I'll Make it, I Think," for example, the main character is a crippled young man who tries to make sense of his teenage life by naming his body parts, his new best friends: Ralph, his "bad hand," Lon, his other hand, and David, his penis. As he makes sense of his sexual desires, he wishes he could "go out with normal girls" but his webbed hands scare them away ("unless she's into frog"). According to the introduction, the character is based in part on Freese's crippled cousin. Freese doesn't just look at the young male's teenage years and leave it at that. Instead, Freese brings us into the young man's mind, showing us his pain and realization that he's different from others. Through physical frustration, Freese shows that the character has trouble dealing with his life and imagines taking "practice slashes" at his throat with his razor.

The characters in Down to a Sunless Sea are often coping with loss, and unavoidable pain, but somehow these characters show strength. "Herbie" is a story that deals with an abusive father's control over a son who still looks up to him. After Herbie's father shows him how to shine his shoes, Herbie and a friend hope to set up a shoe shine business, but his father won't have a son who shines shoes in the street. Herbie's situation (and his mixed feelings toward his father) is a scenario that Freese reveals without judgment; he shows how feelings toward loved ones are never cut and dried, especially in adolescence.

Freese's stories have similarities with Charles Bukowski in theme, and Raymond Carver in writing style. Instead of trying to make sense of a dark and lonely world, Freese (like Carver) shows us the world each character lives in and leaves it at that, allowing the reader to make sense of it all at face value. In this way, Freese's stories successfully make sense of otherwise senseless moments in childhood. At the same time, he shows there might be hope in the future; in "Alabaster," for example, a young boy meets an elderly Polish woman and her daughter who have moved to his neighborhood. He sees the seven digit tattoo on her arm, and sees that she is "numbered." Freese doesn't say whether or not the young boy knows he has met a holocaust survivor, but leaves open the possibility of hope in the child's future while suggesting the pain of the woman's past.

Of course, Down to a Sunless Sea isn't entirely heavy-handed and depressing (not that sad stories are depressing anyway). At times Freese's stories are quite humorous, as in "Arnold Schwarzenegger's Father Was a Nazi," where Freese has some fun with Schwarzenegger's past. And future, for that matter; the story reveals Schwarzenegger's attempts to re-make his upbringing to fit with his new-found fame and marriage into a heavily political family. Any story about Schwarzenegger in 2007 would be funny, but the story is especially interesting because it was written in 1991. Not only does it reflect a pre-"Governator" Arnold, but also an Arnold Schwarzenegger who hadn't yet graced the world with his god-awful comedies Jingle All the Way and Junior.

Overall, Down to a Sunless Sea is an excellent portrayal of the heartaches and troubles of childhood and adolescence. The short story has become one of the most important literary genres in modern history, and Freese's grasp of the genre is certainly up there with the best modern writers out there. With its important themes and literary allusions, Down to a Sunless Sea is well worth a read.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/12/31/175731.php

Review: Jack Kerouac's American Journey - The Real-Life Odyssey of "On The Road" by Paul Maher Jr.

Jack Kerouac has become one of those larger than life characters from American literature. Like Ernest Hemingway and Walt Whitman before him, Kerouac's mythic status as a road-weary traveler and writer of spontaneous, explosive prose is the reason readers are still drawn to his work.

Of course, the real Jack Kerouac was quite the opposite. Although he truly believed in an America that's only discovered on society's fringes, and tried to express this by writing in a prose style that mimicked jazz music's improvisational techniques, he was still a self-conscious writer who worried about what people thought of him and who methodically mapped out every word he wrote, constantly self-editing and re-writing as he went along. While Kerouac's fans thought of him as an independent man who was just out for kicks, Kerouac's reality was that he longed to settle down, own a ranch in Colorado, and marry a perfectly submissive and quiet wife who would bake and clean for him. At the same time, Kerouac was trying to come to terms with his Catholic past and his changing spiritual views that eventually led him to Buddhism (and, later, back to Christianity).

In Jack Kerouac's American Journey, Paul Maher, Jr. shows how a young man with grand ideas tries to seek out meaning in an America that became increasingly meaningless to him. Along the way, Kerouac decides that he must write the perfect modern American picaresque that would rival anything his heroes Mark Twain and Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; in On The Road, Kerouac takes his adventures and desires to new territories and American experiences and creates the perfect novel to express the yearning Americans felt at the time.

Maher's well-researched book about Jack Kerouac's journey as he wrote and published On The Road begins with a young Kerouac attending classes at Columbia University, when he meets his lifelong friends and literary confidantes Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. At the time, Kerouac was obsessed with writers like Thomas Wolfe and Fyodor Dostoevsky who inspired him to keep writing. Kerouac sees in these writers and friends that life is lived best on the fringes of society, or, as Sal Paradise puts it in On The Road, life is lived best with "the mad ones ... desirous of everything at the same time."

Maher's research of this first trip shows that Kerouac's re-telling of it in On The Road is almost exactly as it happened, but it took Kerouac a while to finally decide to make it out on the road. As Cassady and Ginsberg moved out to Denver, Colorado, Kerouac finally got the nerve to get up out of his mother's home (where he had spent several months typing out his first novel The Town and The City) and travel by bus to Denver. Maher dives into Kerouac's personal journals and letters to Cassady and Ginsberg (plus interviews with the girls he met along the way) to reveal a lost man trying to find some meaning in what seems completely meaningless. Through his many other trips across America and into Mexico, Kerouac realizes the hope and dreams of the America he tries to re-create, and as a result, Kerouac is able to find his way along the road to self-fulfillment.

Jack Kerouac's American Journey also takes us into Kerouac's process of writing, and reveals a man who was a careful recorder of his life. Maher explains that the crazy spontaneity of Kerouac's life is more of a front than anything else. The Kerouac who sat in the bedroom of his mother's house typing away was not nearly as improvisational as we may think. After late evenings typing away, he would write ideas and criticism of his favorite writers in his notebook, and he'd also write an exact number of words he had typed up that day. Sometimes, the number would be near 3,000. Other times, 800 or so. But he was careful to write down the number, especially in the early days while working on The Town and the City.

Of course, Kerouac's life was more than just the subterranean life of a hobo on the road. By the time Kerouac sits down to re-write On The Road from scratch, he is married to Joan Anderson and trying to settle down. He also "took eight sheets of drawing paper and Scotch-taped them together, end to end, creating one continuous roll that he could feed into his typewriter," a typing technique that he used to create the scroll version of On The Road and establish the myth that he was a spontaneous writer who never self-edited (he would allow this myth to carry on until his death). Maher, of course, demythologizes this myth and carefully puts Kerouac among other literary giants of the 20th Century, such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, showing that Kerouac spent years and meticulous planning in order to create his great American novel.

Kerouac's world, of course, was ever changing. Maher shows how the changes in post-World War II America affected Kerouac and his fellow "beat" writers, and how Americans slowly move to the suburbs and into lives of domesticity. At the same time, Maher is quick to show that Kerouac was heavily offended by this new found domestic world, and America's increasing desire for conformity and restraint deeply affected how he shaped his novel. By 1957, the year On The Road was finally published, America was a much different place. Rock and Roll had taken over, the civil rights movement was finally taking hold, and Americans didn't know it at the time, but they were about to elect their first Catholic president in the 1960 presidential elections. Although Kerouac had wanted the novel published earlier and had moved on from its themes by 1957, he was happy to see his American picaresque find a place in the youth of the time.

Jack Kerouac's American Journey is a carefully recorded book about one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century, and unlike many other Kerouac scholars, Maher doesn't fall into the traps of myth and legend. Instead, Maher shows the real-life struggles Kerouac faced to create On The Road, and as a result, Maher reveals the profound influence the novel would have on America's changing and maturing attitudes through the 1960s and beyond. Today, Kerouac's novel still influences new generations of readers to live out their own personal fantasies of the American dream, whether those fantasies are in their home, on the page, or out on the road discovering the mad corners of America.

Originally published at Blogcrics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/12/20/031429.php

Review: Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story by Kim Powers

There's something about the ghost story that comes alive in Southern literature. Maybe it's the fact that, scattered unevenly across the Dixie landscape, there are large, former plantation homes that carry the pain and anguish of slavery, wealth, and suicide. It may also be because the hills and cotton fields of the South hide some of America's worst moments in history, and the trees have the scars and bullet holes to prove it.

Yet, the ghost story has never come alive as richly as Southern history may suggest; although the Southern landscape harbors a truly scary past, modern fiction writers would rather focus on how the past dictates the present, and the "ghosts" represented are those moments in time where things were left slightly skewed.

In Kim Powers' latest novel Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story, the literary past comes to haunt the 20th-century's most prominent literary duo: Truman Capote and Harper Lee. Powers re-writes the moments leading up to Truman Capote's death in 1984 by bringing back the dead, and Truman is left haunted by the family murdered in Holcomb, Kansas in his famous "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood.

Capote in Kansas begins as Truman calls his lifelong friend and literary confidant Nelle Harper Lee. Because his life has become a mess of drugs and alcohol, he claims that Nancy Clutter, the woman murdered along with her family in In Cold Blood, has appeared as a ghost, but Nelle is not buying it — she has harbored bitterness toward Truman for years. Powers then reveals that the Clutter family ghosts are "coming for [Nelle] as well," our first indication these ghosts are more real than Truman's drugged-up phone conversations suggest.

Unfortunately, Powers doesn't set us up with much more than a weak storyline about ghosts that, unless you are familiar with In Cold Blood and Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, remain flat and uninteresting. He bases all of the events, feelings and opinions between Truman and Nelle on biography, but there's not much here that is fresh and original. Even if all you know about Truman Capote and Harper Lee is based on 2005's excellent film Capote, you know enough about this novel's central themes, since most of the book uses ideas presented in that movie and a little extra research.

Granted, Powers has bulked up his story with a lot of research on the Capote/Lee friendship. Throughout the story, Nelle reflects back on her past (particularly her friendship and support of Truman), and along the way, Nelle is visited by the ghosts of the Clutter family. These visits lead Nelle to question Truman's intentions; in the process, Truman sends Nelle creepy messages in cardboard boxes. Powers does a great job of getting to the heart of Nelle's insecurities and Truman's self-inflated ego, but he never takes us beyond this.

The problem with Capote in Kansas is, quite frankly, the plot. The story revolves around the resurrection of ghosts from the past, who visit both Nelle and Truman late at night. But that's about it. I'd write more about their encounters with the ghosts, but there's really nothing left to say about them. For Nelle, the ghosts bring back her bitterness towards Truman's sabotage of her novel, and Powers uses old rumors about the authorship of Nelle's To Kill a Mockingbird to show why she is bitter. Truman, on the other hand, believes the ghosts are there to seek revenge for In Cold Blood, but despite this, Truman continues his downward spiral of paranoia.

The question remains: why write a ghost story in the first place if the ghost story is such a minor aspect of the plot? If Powers had created a story that relied less on established biography and more on the fictional world he's trying to create, the ghost story could have worked. Instead, Capote in Kansas reads more like a poor attempt at mimicking Capote's "non-fiction novel" style than a convincing Southern ghost story.

If you are a fan of Lee or Capote's fiction, Capote in Kansas: A Ghost Story may be worth reading, but don't expect much original information. For everyone else, this ghost story is not that exciting. It may use some Southern gothic traditions to re-visit this infamous friendship, but it doesn't have the plot or imagery to hold you through to the end.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/12/04/190912.php

Review: Happy Apple - Happy Apple Back on Top

There is much debate about whether our universe is ordered and purposeful or just a random, chaotic mess. At face value, our lives seem to have a purpose, and everything seems to happen for a reason, until everything comes crashing down. And then we are forced to either see these failures as a life test, some weird thing we call "fate," or just another step in a completely random system of life experiences that inevitably lead to death and suffering.

OK, wait a minute. This is getting way too heavy for a music review. But I say all of this because we can use these two opposing views of the universe to try and figure out how music works. For example, those who accept the verse-chorus-verse, three-chord pop-song structure of music probably believe in an ordered universe, since their music is ordered and predictable. When a musician comes along to challenge this song structure, they can be easily tagged as poor musicians or too "experimental." However, those who accept music that goes beyond the predictability of most pop songs probably don't see much order in the universe, and are willing to try new things since there's nothing to lose anyway. This view of the universe works especially well for jazz, since most jazz musicians are willing to improvise around a single song riff, and just let loose.

Minnesota-based jazz trio Happy Apple are certainly not afraid to experiment with chaos, and their free-form jazz style breaks through almost all possible genre barriers. Happy Apple's latest album, Happy Apple Back on Top, takes some of the best aspects of rock, punk, jazz, blues, and funk (and about every other possible genre) and throws it all together in a complete improvisational package.

In fact, there is hardly a moment of complete sanity on Back On Top. Once Happy Apple lulls you into thinking they're going to stick with one thing for the rest of the song, they'll switch gears, leaving you with either a headache or some serious admiration. For most jazz ensembles today, you get a fairly predictable mix between song structure and improvisation, but with Happy Apple, it feels like complete improvisation. Back On Top is just a complete grab-bag of the trio's favorite musical styles, and it isn't afraid to abandon its jazz roots every now and then.

Happy Apple Back On Top kicks off with "The New Bison," a song that immediately establishes saxophonist Michael Lewis as the central player in this band. But there is also a heavy presence of drums and bass; in fact, the song starts with a muddled bass riff, and breaks into a fully synthesized drum jam before making way for Lewis' sax arpeggios. Since the album is completely instrumental, the dynamic between bass guitar and saxophone seem to work as the melody and harmony of each song, propped up by drummer David King's great sense of rhythm. Even then, it's still hard to make sense of any melody or harmony, since every member seems set on improvising every riff in their own way.

Even though Back On Top is a heavily improvised album, Happy Apple still show that they are excellent musicians. The band feels as tight as possible, and on songs like "1996 A.D." and "Density in Dan's Fan City," the band doesn't miss a beat. Like their previous albums, such as 2003's successful Youth Oriented, the band is not afraid of lengthy jam sessions that are hard to re-create. But since this is one very talented group of musicians, everything feels planned out and methodical. Certainly, Happy Apple are able to mix the best parts of jazz improvisation with one or two motifs that hold each song together and create a unified (albeit chaotic) theme.

If there's any complaint for Back On Top, it's that it seems much more subdued than their previous work. For example, 2003's Youth Oriented had some louder sax moments and didn't shy away from some excellent electric guitar work; in fact, the inclusion of a distorted electric guitar is partly why Happy Apple got lumped together with other indie rock musicians. Including drum machines and synthesizers is certainly a step forward for the band, but it doesn't have the same punch as their previous albums.

Happy Apple Back on Top is an excellent album that will attract fans from all sorts of musical genres, but it remains true to its jazz roots. Certainly, Happy Apple love to mess with your head, and their music is a bit chaotic, but it seems to work. Instead of accepting the inevitable decline of the universe, Happy Apple seems to just let it be, and as a result, they are here on this earth to create some excellent music.

Originally published at Blogcritics.org: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/11/17/110305.php