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  • Brian Sawyer 3:15 pm on January 19, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

    Bootleg Series, Volume 6 

    News from bobdylan.com:

    On March 23, Columbia/Legacy will release Live 1964: Concert at Philharmonic Hall — The Bootleg Series Volume 6, a two-CD set documenting the all-acoustic, October 31, 1964, Halloween-night concert by Bob Dylan at Philharmonic Hall in New York City. The recording captures a 23-year-old Dylan at a transitional moment in his career, two months after the release of Another Side of Bob Dylan, the last acoustic album he would record before heading into the studio weeks after the Philharmonic Hall concert to embark on the experiment that would result in the electrified rock heard on Bringing It All Back Home, several songs from which he previewed at this concert. Live 1964 will take its place as the only and earliest official release of an all-acoustic Bob Dylan concert.Live 1964 shows Dylan at the peak of his early performing powers. Less than three years since his first album was released, he offhandedly jokes with his audience, fending off enthusiastic hecklers with deft wit and snappy comebacks, only to turn around and deliver blisteringly intense versions of protest songs, folk tunes, talking blues, love ballads and a few theretofore unreleased, indefinable songs, including “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Gates of Eden” and “It’s Alright Ma,” that would spark a musical revolution over the course of the next year. Joan Baez appears as special guest on four tracks.

    Live 1964 comes in a brilliant box with a hardcover slipcase and a 52-page booklet with rare and previously unpublished photos by Daniel Kramer, Hank Parker and Sandy Speiser. The booklet includes a new essay by Sean Wilentz, the Princeton University-based historian and writer who attended the Halloween 1964 concert at age 13.

    Disc 1
    1. The Times They Are A-Changin’
    2. Spanish Harlem Incident
    3. Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues
    4. To Ramona
    5. Who Killed Davey Moore?
    6. Gates of Eden
    7. If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Got To Stay All Night)
    8. It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding)
    9. I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
    10. Mr. Tambourine Man
    11. A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

    Disc 2
    1. Talkin’ World War III Blues
    2. Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
    3. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
    4. Mama, You Been On My Mind
    5. Silver Dagger
    6. With God On Our Side
    7. It Ain’t Me, Babe
    8. All I Really Want to Do

    Even the most devoted Dylan fans will admit that his concerts are hit-or-miss, amazing or horrible. I’m looking forward to Volume 6 because, so far, the bootleg series has done a good job of sticking to the good ones (see Volume 4 and Volume 5). Though they’re not concert discs, Volumes 1-3 (released in a single set) provided an auspicious start for the series.

     

  • Brian Sawyer 12:21 pm on January 19, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

    Knitting Update 

    If you’ve patiently awaited my promised update of my knitting page, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve finally brought it up to date. The new page includes shots of all the projects I gave as gifts this holiday season, as well as my current project. Here’s the sock I’m working on now:

     

  • Brian Sawyer 3:55 pm on January 16, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

    Lethem and the Quest for Ubiquity 

    I’m not deep enough into The Fortress of Solitude to review or even pass judgment on it, but I do have a specific itch that needs to be scratched immediately. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

    I really wish I hadn’t misplaced my copy of Eco’s The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. I seem to remember an essay (perhaps titled “The Myth of Superman”?) that discussed the comic-book episode in which Superman replicates himself into numerous simulacra. Though I forget its thesis, the essay posited that Superman copies himself in an attempt to achieve ubiquity (perhaps the greatest super power a hero could possess, but one of the few powers Superman actually lacks).

    Lethem’s title The Fortress of Solitude obviously refers to Superman’s frozen retreat, where he goes to get away from it all–to be alone–which could be read as the antithesis of his desire for ubiquity–to be everywhere at once. As I say, I’m not deep enough in the book to understand the full significance of the title, but Lethem has already explicitly referred to Dylan’s and Mingus’s tagging of Brooklyn as a quest for ubiquity. In fact, Dylan doesn’t even use his own tag; by replicating Mingus’s tag, Dylan creates simulara to become a part of Mingus’s quest. Dylan himself acts as a simulacrum of Mingus, a replication that creates further replication.

    Complicating matters, Dylan is critical of Superman as a comic-book hero. As part of the DC Comics stable of characters, Superman is one-dimensional and boring, in stark contrast to the gritty, troubled heroes found in Marvel Comics. I’m only now at the point in the book where Dylan has been instructed to “fight evil.” He has yet to take on the responsibility of becoming a true super hero. Perhaps all will be revealed.

    Still, my observation seems far too obvious for it to be unintentional on Lethem’s part. Moreover, it seems far too obvious to pass as an original analysis. Surely, this connection has been discussed elsewhere? If you know of any review that has tackled this theme, please let me know where to find it. I would greatly appreciate scratching this particular itch. Till then, I’m back to Lethem and hoping that my beloved Eco volume turns up soon.

     

  • Brian Sawyer 3:57 pm on January 7, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

    Whitbread Winner 

    After reading Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time on my three-leg flight from Baltimore to San Francisco this past Saturday, I returned to the blogosphere to find everyone (TEV, Return of the Reluctant, Maud, etc.) pointing to its recent receipt of the Whitbread prize for best novel of the year. I’m glad to see it getting recognition, and I’m sure that it will indeed turn into the “huge bestseller” they’re predicting it will become (I was under the impression it was already there).

    Mark’s astute review at The Elegant Variation convinced me to bump it up in the queue, and I was glad I did. Two of Mark’s excerpts from the book sealed my interest. Here’s one:

    This is what Siobahn says is called a rhetorical question. It has a question mark at the end, but you are not meant to answer it because the person answering it already knows the answer. It is difficult to spot a rhetorical question.

    And here’s the other:

    I think [metaphor] should be called lie because a pig is not like a day and people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because imagining an apple in someone’s eye doesn’t have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about.

    The autistic narrator’s struggles with any nonliteral use of language (including metaphor, irony, sarcasm, etc.) reminded me much of Jonathan Safran Foer’s narrator in Everything Is Illuminated, who simply can’t seem to grasp the nuance of idiom in English, his second language. This risky style makes both books incredibly compelling, but, for me, it also makes both books ultimately a little disappointing, perhaps inevitably.

    In all, Haddon does a remarkable job of maintaining this difficult device without it becoming too forced or tiresome. (However, I was glad that the book was short. I’m not sure how much longer it could stay fresh and interesting.) This unique voice and perspective provides an interesting access to the story and naturally highlights significant developments in the plot, which might otherwise have slipped right by unnoticed.

    The downside of this perspective is that it is heartbreaking to spend a whole book with a character who can’t actually feel (or at least express) the emotions that I, as a reader, require for a completely satisfying story. Though there is some resolution at the end of the book, I couldn’t help feel the disconcerting paradox that a) the narrator never authentically feels or understands the motivations of the people who love him (or even what love itself is, aside from protection and providing food) or his own emotional response to problems that befall him and his family, and yet b) he is obviously affected by these complex issues, yet he never really comes to terms with them.

    In the end, I felt the most empathy for the boy’s father, who feels the weight of everything enough for both him and his son. I’m sure I’m not explaining this well at all. As I say, perhaps this dissatisfaction is inevitable, given the structure of the book. Perhaps it’s built into the book to show how hard autism is on the families. I guess I just wanted, just once, to hear the narrator be able to say, “That made me feel sad.” That would have been enough resolution for me.

    A final aside: after the narrator states early on in the book that “this is a murder mystery novel,” I was mildly disappointed a few pages later to discover that it actually was not a murder mystery novel. Of course, my reaction isn’t really a criticism of the book. For the most part, after I realized what was going on, I liked the precedent that this deception set and was happy to be led by the narrator throughout the rest of the book, even if (perhaps especially because) he couldn’t be trusted to give me the whole story.

     

  • Brian Sawyer 3:40 pm on January 5, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

    Crafty Christmas 

    Happy new year, everyone! As promised, this first post of the new year is to share some of the crafty things I gave as gifts this holiday season.

    I’ve set up a knitting page (which is still incomplete, but I intend to update it soon), and I’ve also prepared a photo essay that documents the handbinding of one of the books I made:

    Hope you enjoy!

     

  • Brian Sawyer 1:19 pm on January 1, 2004 Permalink | Reply  

    Completed in 2004 

    Middlesex
    by Jeffrey Eugenides

    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
    by Mark Haddon

    The Da Vinci Code
    by Dan Brown

    The Fortress of Solitude
    by Jonathan Lethem

    The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
    by Simon Winchhester

    The Partly Cloudy Patriot
    by Sarah Vowell

    Running with Scissors
    by Augusten Burroughs

    Three Men in a Boat
    by Jerome K. Jerome

    Angels & Demons
    by Dan Brown

    Eats, Shoots & Leaves
    by Lynne Truss

    Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them [audio]
    by Al Franken

    Don Quixote [audio]
    by Miguel de Cervantes (trans. Edith Grossman)

    A Suitable Boy
    by Vikram Seth

    Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
    by David Sedaris

    How to Be Alone: Essays
    by Jonathan Franzen

    Since You Ask
    by Louise Wareham

    Brooklyn Noir
    ed. by Tim McLaughlin

    Tears of the Giraffe
    by Alexander McCall Smith

    Morality for Beautiful Girls
    by Alexander McCall Smith

    The Kalahari Typing School for Men
    by Alexander McCall Smith

    The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
    by Douglas Adams

    Cloud Atlas
    by David Mitchell

    Improbable
    by Adam Fawer

     

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