Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Jimi Hendrix and the Making of "Are You Experienced" by Sean Egan (2002)

A well-researched look at the album that introduced Jimi Hendrix to the world.

Nonfiction Review: Jimi Hendrix and the Making of Are You Experienced is just what it says on the tin. A nutshell biography of the Sixties' guitarist and a sharp description of the piecemeal and intermittent recording of an album that still hangs together like a single song. As with authors, when I find a performer I enjoy I try to get a full picture of their work. Jimi Hendrix is a timeless musician who, even today 53 years after his first LP, still sounds contemporary and fresh. An artist who crossed divides, reached new audiences, and created templates still being followed decades later. From the devil's interval of "Purple Haze" to the balladic beauty of "The Wind Cries Mary" and the spaceship blues of "Red House," Are You Experienced (1967) is a seamless web of brilliant sounds. As Sean Egan notes, the record is striking not just for the unheard-of and revolutionary guitar work, but for the group creation of a new music. He notes that despite primitive and rudimentary recording techniques (this was 1966, after all) a full, rich sound was created. Egan has written a book with just enough rock'n'roll attitude to keep it fresh. He's a bit British-centric but not obnoxiously so (the British LP may've been better than the American release -- curse those record companies!), and seems obsessed with "getting it right," which is an excellent quality in a historian. The Making of Are You Experienced is filled with inside information and a world of stories I didn't know. Jimi Hendrix is one of the greatest rock guitarists, unfortunately a member of the 27 Club, and one of the most tantalizing might-have-been meditations ever. What would Plath, Keats, or Emily Bronte have written? I like to think that Hendrix would've got his act together and played 21st Century blues for the rest of time, that he'd've found that rock, blues, jazz, soul, lyric synthesis he was seeking. Being an amateur rock historian myself (meaning I like to read books about old-time rock musicians), I tip my hat to a job well done by a professional rock historian. The Making of Are You Experienced is necessary for anyone with an interest in or curiosity about Jimi Hendrix.  [4★]

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Fear by Stefan Zweig (1920)

A married woman has an affair with a musician, but learns there are consequences.

Book Review: Fear is an extended exploration into the single emotion torturing a young woman in Vienna. After a short and meaningless affair with a musician, a bourgeois wife and mother is threatened with exposure. The title here is translated as "fear" from the German word "angst," but I understand it could also be translated as "anxiety," which is closer to the meaning of the word in English. Both fear and anxiety are ingredients of the young woman's feelings, but shame and guilt complete the emotional cocktail. Fear is a melodramatic story with a surprise ending, which makes for solid entertainment, but in the end it's a morality tale: "Don't cheat on your husband." Or as the husband says when disciplining the children: "That fear was worse than the punishment." What is surprising, however, is the passionless nature of the affair. It isn't much fun: "She returned to her lover ... without being either gratified or disappointed, out of a certain sense of duty and the apathy of habit." Zweig has a good time poking the bourgeoisie, although I don't know enough about Vienna in the '20s to be able to fully appreciate it. Much is made of the sense of the middle class: "She was one of those women ... whose bourgeois nature is so strong that it imposes a sense of order even on adultery." As an aside, I've seen several dates for the first publication of Fear: 1910, 1920, 1925, 1936. I don't know which is correct, but 1920 seems the best consensus. An enjoyable if one-note novella with a somewhat unsatisfying twist ending. But it's still Stefan Zweig and that's always a good thing.  [3½★]

Saturday, June 13, 2020

A Mercy by Toni Morrison (2008)

In late 17th Century America a racially diverse group of strangers form a family as the father, Jacob Vaark, builds a great house for them.

Book Review: A Mercy is a powerful addition to the American canon, perfect in its own way as a tale of expulsion from the Garden of Eden. How Edenic early America was destroyed by its twin original sins. This is a large story hidden in a small book. We have two streams in A Mercy: what the author has to say and how she says it. Toni Morrison (1931-2019) tells this story of colonial America (pre-United States) through the ephemeral and shifting feelings, senses, images, emotions, thoughts, memories, impressions, and imaginings of her characters. Stream of consciousness combined with heavy research. The point of view changes frequently and is disorienting at times, but I think Morrison has reached the point where she can expect a little work from her readers. There are bad writers and bad readers; Morrison is not a bad writer. Any reader who won't put in the effort to capture this story is a bad reader. That's okay, there're worse things in the world. Considering that Morrison's novels are historical fiction, much of her writing was immersing herself in some aspect of the American past, researching the American narrative and its connection to, inter alia, race, which is why her novels are now so necessarily part of the American literary heritage. Here in the U.S. before it was, she posits a chance that America could have been the Garden of Eden it was meant to be, that it might not be brought down by its twin original sins, the twin serpents that poisoned that garden. The garden is failed father Jacob Vaark's great house (in the town of Milton), with its two wrought iron serpents at the gate. He had gathered together four women from all over the world: Africa (Florens), England (Rebekka), the original America (Lina), and one a mix of any or all of the above (Sorrow). They form a kind of family, which just might transcend the societal flaws that brought them all together. But Vaark is no more perfect than Adam, and the family "falls" apart. "They once thought they were a kind of family because together they had carved companionship out of isolation ... their futures were separate ... courage alone would not be enough." Morrison sees a couple of other cracks in the foundation of America. The novel's heavy emphasis on religion shows flaws in faith that also propelled America's schisms. It's easy to forget that a desire for freedom to worship as they wished drove many of the early colonies. Capitalism also comes in for a critique here: The trade in rum mandates slavery, and no trade can quite escape the taint of buying and selling human beings. Even a good-hearted man like Jacob Vaark ("there was a profound difference between the intimacy of slave bodies at Jublio and a remote labor force in Barbados. Right? Right, he thought."). Morrison wrote an epic in 167 pages. A Mercy is the story of the Fall of America, a paradise lost, but still with that tiny bit of hope that mercy provides: "It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human."  [4½★]

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

On Booze by F. Scott Fitzgerald (2011)

A selection of short pieces by the author of The Great Gatsby, some pertaining to the drinking of alcohol.

Book Review: On Booze is not quite as described on the tin: "A collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best drinking stories." Rather, these are pieces cherry-picked from the assemblage The Crack-Up (1945) edited by his friend Edmund (Bunny) Wilson and published by New Directions after Fitzgerald's death. (Wilson also edited Fitzgerald's unfinished final novel, The Last Tycoon.) Most of the content (consisting of autobiography, notes, and letters) mention drinking at some point, but few are drinking stories. Much of it reads like sketches for some future novel or story. As with the original source, On Booze is hit or miss, but generally entertaining in a morbid, melancholy, miserable sort of way. Many of the pieces are intensely personal as they were written at a time when Fitzgerald was usually drunk, depressed, desolate, down and out; he appears to have had a nervous breakdown. His writing is always a joy, though. As these works weren't selected by Fitzgerald and are found in the original book, On Booze isn't a necessary part of the canon and is probably of little interest for the casual Jazz Age reader. For the true F. Scott fan in your life, however, this small book would make a perfect "thinking of you" gift.  [3★]

Monday, June 8, 2020

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig (1942)

A chess match is contested between the arrogant world champion and an unknown amateur aboard a ship sailing from New York to Buenos Aires.

Book Review: Chess Story was the final work by Austrian author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), completed shortly before he and his wife committed suicide in Brazil. Let me first mention that I have seen this work entitled Chess, Chess Story, A Chess Story, and The Royal Game. In the original German it's called Schachnovelle or Chess Novella. The plot consists of the "cold and tenacious" world chess champion, Mirko Czentovic, playing a shipboard game with Dr. B, an unknown Austrian victim of the Nazi regime. It's tempting to see Chess Story as an allegory for the Western response to fascism, with the brutish and stupid Czentovic, a monomaniac and megalomaniac, as the fascists and the cultured and intelligent Dr. B as Western civilization. Typically, the always empathetic Zweig cannot paint any character, even his pawn Czentovic, as wholly bad. In the story, however, the civilized world is not necessarily triumphant. As this novella was written in 1942 while Nazism was still on the upswing, this view may reflect Zweig's belief that this was not a world he wanted to live in and his tragic capitulation. Familiarity with the game is not required, though the greater one's knowledge of chess the more likely the reader is to understand and fully appreciate the work. Having been strongly pushed to play chess as a child (see sisters, Polgár) I enjoyed the chess references, but such experience is unnecessary. Despite being a potentially arid subject, Chess Story is highly suspenseful, building tension to a climactic breaking point. The writing is powerfully emotional, letting us fully understand both antagonists. The reader is in good hands here.  [5★]

Sunday, June 7, 2020

Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig (1911)

A young man befriends a lonely boy in an effort to seduce the boy's mother.

Book Review: Burning Secret travels within minds. It's a small crime that I've never read this writer before. Austrian author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) has the ability to let the reader see through three different pairs of eyes, three different sets of feelings, three different personalities. This is a novella of emotions, all of which ring strikingly true. Without being oppressively psychological, Zweig takes the reader inside to feel empathy for three people, none of whom are wholly sympathetic. The story of a 12-year-old growing up: "Dimly he felt that the secret was the bolt on the door of childhood." The plot of Burning Secret is simple, a young man callously befriends the lonely boy in an attempt seduce his mother. The boy tries to understand as best he can. Later, "He had lost all impatience with life ... for the first time he had seen it as it was, no longer enveloped in the thousand lies of childhood, but naked in its own dangerous beauty." It's astonishing that Zweig chose to tell this story of seduction, this study of human nature, from the point of view of the boy. A novella with the power to change the reader even as the characters do. The tone of the writing is perfect and the translation is excellent. Burning Secret was my introduction to Zweig and now I must read more.  [5★]