Review: Macklemore The VS EP (Not a book)

Usually you can expect to find book reviews here at Metro Marginalia, but I think I'm going to open things up a bit every now and again. And right now, I've got some music that I'm dying to talk about.

Macklemore, a rapper out of Seattle, first came to my attention with this post on my favorite baseball blog. It's his tribute to one of my favorite people ever, the voice of the Seattle Mariners, Dave Niehaus. The announcer passed away a few months ago, and to say it shocked me and others is an understatement. When I thought about it, Niehaus has to be one of the five or so voices I've heard most in my life, and he was really the voice of growing up for me. There was nothing better than turning on a Mariners game and getting to hear Dave spin a story.

Well, Macklemore and his producer Ryan Lewis got around to releasing the video for "My Oh My." And it's amazing. Take a look for yourself.

 

And if that was all Macklemore had ever done, I'd think of him pretty fondly. It's an amazing tribute to an amazing man. But, a cousin of mine was raving about the rapper over Christmas, so I decided to delve a bit more deeply. After all, it'd be pretty great to discover a good rapper from Seattle. 

Review: Love Me

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It's always one of my favorite holidays, because how can you possibly have too much delicious food? You can't. I stayed up late last night just to finish Garrison Keillor's 2003 novel Love Me. I have to say, I was a bit disappointed. I love Keillor on Prairie Home Companion and his novel Wobegon Boy is one of my favorite novels. So I had pretty high expectations coming into this book. (Aside: I found the book in hardcover for $4 at Second Story Books on DuPont Circle. Bought it, got home, looked inside: it's signed by Keillor!)

The story follows writer Larry Wyler and his mid-life crisis after receiving a huge bonus for writing a national best-seller. He then moves to New York after being unfaithful to his wife (though he doesn't divorce her). What follows is a tale of mid-life angst that is at times amusing, but usually just too drawn out.

Wyler gets hired by the New Yorker and runs into writer's block. He can do nothing about it, and has a series of meaningless affairs and friendships. Somehow he gets tangled up in the mob (they own the New Yorker apparently), misses his wife, and debates leaving New York City. But for some reason, he loves the city that has given him so many troubles. Somewhere in the mix he gets hired as an advice columnist, which becomes his alter-ego "Mr. Blue."

The book had good moments. I always enjoy when Keillor writes anything pertaining to classical music (Wyler loves it), and his midwestern humor shines throughout. Nevertheless, the book dragged on, had too much sex (I mean, really... every 20 or so pages there was some sort of a sex scene. Never too graphic, but good God man.), and was just highly implausible (Wyler killed a mob boss? His wife gladly takes him back after his sleeping around in NYC? Sure, why not?). It's not a book you need to go get. If you really want to read Keillor (and I recommend it), pick up a copy of Wobegon Boy. That's some A+ writing.

Salman Rushdie and Me

So I'm in the middle of The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie right now. It's my second novel, after my spin through Fury last year, and it's the second time I hate Rushdie. Why did I go back to him? Why is there a chance that I will again in the future? Why does he at once infuriate and hold me captive?

I know two reasons I came back, and probably will in the future. The first is the importance of his works. It's nearly impossible to have a discussion of significant contemporary literature and not mention Rushdie. He is undeniably influential, having won not only a Booker award, but a "Best of Booker" award in a public vote of past Booker winners. Any talk of controversial books has to mention The Satanic Verses (probably my choice for the next time I read him), which brought the ire of much of the Muslim world on Rushdie. His work is so often referenced that it almost feels irresponsible to not read him.

The second reason I have returned to Rushdie is that he undeniably has a way with words. There are times when his prose is achingly beautiful. His description of the singer Ormus Cama putting a song on tape using no musicians but himself was immediately arresting. (Note: bouncing refers to the process of mixing multiple tracks into fewer; used in the days when magnetic tape made possible only four tracks.)

Each time he lays down a track - he can play every instrument in the studio better than the sessions guys he's just fired - he comes into the booth, lies down on the seating unit, closes his eyes. The sound mixer moves his slides, turns his dials, and Ormus directs him until the music coming out of the speakers is the secret music in his head. Pull those up, push those back, he says. Bring this in here, fade that away there. Okay, it's okay. That's it. Don't change a thing. Go.


You're sure, now, the mixer says. Because this is it. No turning back.


Bouncey, bouncey, Ormus grins, and the mixer laughs and sings back at him.

This was one of the best scenes in any book that I've come across lately. Maybe it's just my fascination with what goes on in the recording studio, but Rushdie nailed it here.

The problem comes almost everywhere else. Rushdie tries so damn hard to force allusion into his writing that it becomes tiresome. I really get the feeling that he writes with the attitude of "No way in hell will you all get all of my references. Suckers." And for some reason (though I'm not sure why) his plot twists irritate me to no end. Ormus and co. live in a world where Kennedy was never shot and the Watergate scandal unfolded exactly as we know it... in the guise of a novel. But Ormus, after an accident, can see into a parallel universe. I'm fine with that idea. Science says there are probably parallel universes. The annoying bit however is: that otherworld is OURS.

Why does Rushdie, feel the need to dabble in other universes in his novels? In Fury it was a land of puppets! Here, it's US! Something of this just strikes me as incredibly pretentious, and I realize this may be unjustified. It is, however, the vibe I get from him. But I came back, didn't I? He certainly keeps me hooked, and he has moments of sublime beauty. If he could channel that for a whole novel, I'd tell everyone I knew to read the book. Rushdie at his best is unparalleled, no one can hope to match him. What good is his best, though, if it only happens rarely?

On a Different Matter Entirely

As you may or may not know, my life outside of the confines of these HTML walls is lived as a grad student in music history. I have a deep-seated love of classical music, and I've been upset lately that as much as I talk about it in school, I hardly ever get to talk to non-music-nerd people about it. I love having an opportunity to spread this music around, to raise awareness, to inspire other people to fall head-over-heels in love with it. It's why I want to become a professor: that chance to let others into what I enjoy so much.

I've had outlets before for this, including my classical radio show ([not-so-] cleverly titled "Classical Washington") and accompanying blog at WRGW. It's partially thanks to GW that I get the chance to write about classical again. Starting now (the first post is live), I'll be writing classical music posts at FoBoBlo, the blog of Foggy Bottom. You'll get previews of happenings at the Kennedy Center, and other musical events around Foggy Bottom. I'm going to try to make the writing broad enough so it can include everyone: the person who doesn't listen to classical all the way to the person with a 1,500 CD collection. So keep reading here at Metro Marginalia. This is where my book stuff goes. But if you have any desire to read about classical music (or just to read a pretty fantastic blog), check out FoBoBlo.

Vitriolic, arsenical green

I'm only 8 pages into it, but I need to recommend that everyone go read the first 4 or 5 pages of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Those few pages contain some of the most beautiful writing I've ever come across. Brace yourself for some coarse language (racial epithets), but the one example that really stood out was in the first paragraph. The context: talking about being hypnotized by the road and then driving off it:

Then a nigger chopping cotton a mile away, he'll look up and see the little column of black smoke standing up above the vitriolic, arsenical green of the cotton rows, and up against the violent, metallic, throbbing blue of the sky.

Warren was the United States' first Poet Laureate, so it's no surprise that he can write with such vivid imagery. But it still caught me off guard. I've read some good books lately, but nothing that grabs the imagination and the mental ear quite like this. You can write a good story, and you can write well. I can't judge the story yet, but Warren already has the writing well part solidified in the first page.

It really reminds you that writing is an art, and at times it can be just as arresting as gazing upon Church's Niagra at the Corcoran, or hearing the slow movement of Debussy's string quartet. Hopefully I'll come across more of this as I write the blog, but it seems fitting that I should come across such a fine example of the way in which writing can be the most vivid of arts just as I begin to collect in writing my thoughts on writing.

I will keep updating as I keep reading. And certainly there will be some discussion of The Three Musketeers soon.