Booth # 2: Bookworms Corner

[Rit]

great summary of Meltzer, Jac. I got the exact same feeling you did when i tried to read Just A Whore.. it's mostly rambling pretentious crap. Meltzer claims that he influenced Bangs, and Bangs admitted it too, but clearly the student transcended the master if that's so.

I'm too young to have much inkling of what the Creem era would have been like, first hand, though i've read quite a bit about it and Bangs and Marsh and Tosches. Nick Tosches' novel, however, i can speak about. It's quite erudite and filled with poetic feeling. It's also one of the most gruesomest books i've read in a while, with brutal characters and feeling. Yet, i'm hooked, coz you can sense that Tosches has prepared widely for this book. It's peppered with Catholicisms and philosophical ruminations on the nature of art, the Church and life.

it's not always pretty, but it's a good read.

[JACkory]

Ritalin said:

great summary of Meltzer, Jac. I got the exact same feeling you did when i tried to read Just A Whore.. it's mostly rambling pretentious crap. Meltzer claims that he influenced Bangs, and Bangs admitted it too, but clearly the student transcended the master if that's so.

Meltzer probably helped Les score some awesome dope, thereby "influencing him". ;D ;D ;D

But seriously, I can see how Lester would be enamored of the free-form gonzo style that was Meltzer's one-trick-pony stock-in-trade. Bangs always was a "Born-too-late Beatnick". Probably read some of his stuff with one of those Vic's inhaler thingys squirming around in his stomach effecting his mental processes and thought he's found rockcrit's answer to James Joyce. Kinda like when Tommy Chong listened to Black Sabbath at 78 RPMs and "saw God"...ya know that the appreciation was facillitated by some sort of mind-altering substance...

If indeed Meltzer was an influence on Bangs I'd have to say that not only did "the student transcend the master", the student rendered the master's work superfluous. Les definately wrote some off the wall stuff, but he was too smart and knew (and loved) his subject too much to ever fall into the same vat of boredom where Richard Meltzer dwelled...

Which reminds me...some of the most obnoxious stuff in Just a Whore were Meltzer's self-serving footnotes. Just a whore like all the rest? I don't think so...a whore of a decidedly lower pedigree, IMO.

[Rit]

fuckin'-A!

that post said so many things much better than i could.

yep, Lester was beatnik born out of time. his formative influences were beat jazz and beat writings. which sorta explains why he was so hyper-critical of most rock music.. he'd already had his epiphanies in music found prior to the Beatles. He was deeply bemused by the Beatles and only liked the Stones in as much as they had been the raw rockers of their time.

But yeah, i'm deeply impressed by his grasp of "in-between" critical elements of music... he never missed the point.. he had the uncanny knack at instantly sizing up the measure of the band, what their souls were saying rather than what their mouths were parroting.

[RocDoc]

...and while I admittedly AM working from prehistoric memory, I never thought that Meltzer was any better or worse that the eminently comparable Lester Bangs. At least in the beginning.
...both of them were all over the place.

I enjoyed both, back in THAT day.

The last piece I read from Meltzer was published in the Chicago Reader maybe 6-7 months ago and regarded his former school-teacher mother and her descent into Alzheimers...and basically was still of the contrived, stilted, invention(and REinvention) of words/terms...which I thought was still the same approximate ground which Bangs treadedtrod...tho I have not read the deRogatis 'Let It Blurt' either yet. Again, my prehistoric memory is what provides these impressions.

The Alzheimers piece was pretty free-form, profane and weird...but I thought it reflected a grown son's frustrations at his memories of this dominating Super-mother which he once had and his frustrations with his siblings' 'handling' of their Mom's illness, where lots of the responsibility fell to this ne'er-do-well rock n'roll lifestyle'd DESPERATELY unhappy bachelor son, namely to R Meltzer himself...
So being as pissed off as his situation made him, was to me a good reason for HOW he was here expressing himself...but it WAS a painful read...

Have you seen this site by any chance...

www.plateofshrimp.com/peter.shtml

There are Bangs' pieces....but there are also wonderful pieces by Peter Laughner, another Creem-guy and guitarist extraordinaire...
Read the one he did about Rory Gallagher...as a BIG Gallagher fan, I thought this was just done SO sweetly as a tribute to a great but horribly shy musical giant...

[Rit]

nice. i read Bangs' piece on Laughner's death before, and it was really incisive. Plus, Laughner was a founding member of one of my favourite bands, Pere Ubu. But i've not read much written by Laughner, so thanks for the heads up, Doc.

[luke]

Thorn- How embarrassed for Stephen King were you when he wrote himself into Song of Susannah? I read it a couple weeks ago, and man, that was depressing. I plan on reading the last Tower book, and then I'm giving up on him. Hopefully, he'll hang it up, too.

[Thorngrub]

#1 -- I knew of course that he was going to do that.

#2 -- Man I haven't even finished off WOLVES yet, so it goes without saying I have yet to crack the cover of SUSANNAH.

#3 -- Like I said, no harm done for you telling me since I was just waiting for it to happen.

P.S.

As for him hanging it up, yeah I think that's the whole point behind the TOWER series -- he's officially stated that once the final volume is released (Vol VII, "The Dark Tower", of course), he will have officially "retired" from the novelist scene. It's probably about time, but my own guess is that eventually -- after a few more years of chillin' at home experiencing "quality time" with his family and all -- my expectation is that he will have made the transition back into more or less good health, and finally he'll be itchin to write again, and I'm almost certain he will go back on his promise of "retiring for good". The whole reason for his retirement is because he came far closer to a real-death experience with the accident, and was jarred to the core about his mortality and the slight time left for him here on earth with his family. So I figure, after a few years, if he's lucky and heals back to normal, and realized suddenly he's been granted a "new lease on life" so to speak, he'll go back on his promise and begin delivering the goods once again to his devoted fans.

As for writing himself into the series -- man I saw that coming from miles away, and I don't have the least problem with it. I don't see it as writerly vanity or anything; rather, I see that it serves the ultimate function and premise of the Dark Tower series itself. I really feel the scope of the series is based on an enormous ambition that supercedes and trumps every other fictional endeavor and ambition that has ever come down the literary pike. And from the intimations I have gleaned by having delved as far into it as halfway through the fifth volume -- I must say the all-encompassing scope of his vision most certainly reduces all the prior fantasy greats (LOTR, for instance) into mere footnotes that refer to the obscuring bulk of his towering tale. (I.E., the entire world of MIDDLE EARTH is but a subset of the entire DARK TOWER saga, as is our real & actual History & Reality, as well as all others that have ever been imagined or written down in the form of fiction or fantasy). Ambitious, indeed. Whether he has or will succeed, ultimately, is of course up to each individual reader who has stumbled across his vast, uber-apocalyptic tapestry. I personally feel he has both failed and succeeded, each for different reasons, in this endeavor. And I gotta credit him for trying, as well.

Yeah I'm looking forward to starting up SONG OF SUSANNAH . . . just gotta get back into WOLVES and finish that off at long last, first.

[luke]

I figured he'd do it, but I was dreading it. Not gonna give away any spoilers, but you'll find that the Tower universe is just a touch less all-encompassing than is suspected...

I know he's supposed to retire after this, but man, these past couple volumes have just felt rushed to me. I'm looking forward to the last book a lot more than I was before I read Song, though.

[JesusLooksLikeMe]

Absolom and Achitophel
Epic poem by John Dryden. It records the TV career of Absolom and Achitophel, a 17th century comedy double-act whose career spanned the Protectorate and the Restoration of King Charles II. Their most famous routine, in which Oliver Cromwell attemped to get a refund on a dead parrot, is mentioned by Vanbrugh in All's A Tizzy.

[JesusLooksLikeMe]

That was bullshit. I was just seeing if anyone still reads this board.

[Thorngrub]

So that's where that Monty Python sketch came from.

[RocDoc]

They just played the 'Crunchy Frog' skit this morning on the excellent alterna-rock station here in Chicago...

<sub>What do you mean it's still got bones in it?

If it didn't have any bones in it, it wouldn't be very crunchy, now would it??</sub>

[Thorngrub]

Aw man, I haven't heard that one in 4ever. Classic shite, there

[Thorngrub]

Ok, I think it's time to rev up this literary board.

I'm finally digging into JOHN BRUNNER, as I feel I owe it to myself & the science fiction community at large to become familiarized with this truly classic author's dystopian works. I may be 20 yrs too late, but am finding it worthwhile as I immerse myself into his '75 classic THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER:



It really is an engrossing read, and I find myself marvelling at Brunner's ability to extricate the moral marrow (and lack thereof) from society's constantly evolving skeletal communal structures. This novel is about a guy who escapes from a govt think-tank which is trying to isolate a "wisdom gene" in order to facilitate smarter recruits for government positions. In order to do this he hacked into their mainframe, found his ID code and destroyed it, then escaped. From that moment on, technically he ceased to exist, at least in the eyes of the govt. He then proceeded to acquire as many disposable identities as were needed to continue surviving, before the govt caught on and he was forced to dispose of the latest personality/career. This only begins to scratch the surface of where this complex yet smoothly-paced narrative is headed. The characterization is spot-on, which allows the reader to stumble through the more mystifying passages of technobabble and plow on through it for some incredibly thought-provoking scenarios.

I'm not sure if I'm the only true avid science fiction fanatic around here -- I've pretty much been one since the age of 13 when I first stumbled upon Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man. Before then I was reading Doc Savage paperbacks, so perhaps it started there.

In any case, it's about hot-damned time I sunk my hooks into John Brunner. I am looking forward to reading his classic post-eco disaster novel THE SHEEP LOOK UP, as well as his acclaimed STAND ON ZANZIBAR, after I'm done with SHOCKWAVE RIDER.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

You are definitely not the only sci-fi geek around these parts. I have always been an avid sci-fi/fantasy lover and I have to say that I have heard of Brunner's acclaim for some time, but I have to admit that I haven't read anything of his. I will have to procure some of these titles and take a little look-see at what all the fuss is all about.

I don't know if you've read it but Kuttner's "Fury" is an excellant sci-fi read should you get into the mood for something dark and weird.