The Beiderbecke Affair

What Would Willie Do

“He’s an interesting guy, but just about impossible to pin down.” That’s Jonathan Yardley on the now 75-year-old Willie Nelson. Yardley reviewed the new Nelson biography by Joe Nick Patoski in the Washington Post last weekend and found the book, if not Nelson, lacking.

It’s possible that someday a true biography of him will be written, one that discriminates between what is and is not important in his life, that resists the temptations of list-making and tries to dig into the innermost core of this admittedly highly elusive man. Patoski’s book will be an invaluable resource for the person who writes that biography, and not merely because it contains so much ill-digested information. Patoski knows a lot about Nelson’s music and writes about it with sympathy and understanding. If he doesn’t discriminate among factoids, he does discriminate among Nelson’s songs and recordings, and at times his insights are keen. Certainly he is right to pinpoint “Spirit,” Nelson’s superb album of 1996, as a “dramatic shift” in Nelson’s career, taking him back to the simple roots of country music and emphasizing his remarkable guitar playing as well as the “distinctive” piano of his sister Bobbie. “Spirit” is nothing less than a small American masterpiece.

Boy, do I agree about Spirit. Here’s a taste.

• Your Memory Won’t Die in My Grave – Willie Nelson [Mp3]

And here’s one of my all-time favorites, a tribute to Nelson that treats him as he deserves to be treated: as a messiah.

• What Would Willie Do – Bruce Robison [Mp3]

IMAGE: Willie Nelson, Luck Ranch, Spicewood, Texas, 2001 by Annie Leibovitz

‘Ain’t had a bath for a year, dig me!’

In the Chicago Tribune on Feb. 24, 1974, the incomparable rock critic Lester Bangs reviewed Remembering Bix, a memoir by Ralph Berton.

But in the end the lapidary triumph of Beiderbecke’s art may be as significant and, ironically, a direct refutation of the appalling waste of his life. Because Bix proved, five decades ago, that sleaze and destruction, the brandishing of the degrade and déclassé, are not necessary concomitants of an alternative art form: “What was Bix saying that no other musician had ever said? Simply that this jazz wasn’t on the bottom looking up any more. It was out on the level now, reaching for the heights; not grinning sardonically or defiantly at itself as black and poor and dirty and barefoot: Yeah, baby, I’m ugly, ain’t I, I’m evil and lowdown and funky, ain’t had a bath for a year, dig me!”

That’s a lesson that far too many white jivesters, from the Rolling Stones on down, have still not learned.

It can be tough to tell where Bangs ends and Berton begins . . .

Ouch

From Pauline Kael’s For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies (1994):

Rain Main is Dustin Hoffman humping one note on a piano for two hours and eleven minutes. It’s his dream role.

VQR: Iowans Still Have Essential Dignity

I was checking out the new issue of Virginia Quarterly Review online earlier today and ran across a short review of a new collection of black-and-white photographs: Driftless: Photographs from Iowa by Danny Wilcox Frazier. According to VQR, the subjects of Frazier’s work—migrants, slaughterhouse and factory types, people who live in trailers—“haven’t been defeated”; rather, they get their pleasure “in the form of deer hunting and pool halls, cigarettes, beer, and”—wait for it—“love.”

In the end, the magazine assures us, these poor Iowans manage to hold on to their “essential dignity.”

Christ Almighty. How much more condescending and clichéd can a review get?

Still, the photos are gorgeous. And bleak. And make me miss home. Find a whole slideshow here and another exhibit here.

IMAGE: Dirt Road, Near Lone Tree, 2003 by Danny Wilcox Frazier

‘A war-mad little drunkard, a pompous class-addled ass’

I had planned to say a few words about Colm Tóibín’s review of Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review. I thought Tóibín, much less a historian than a literary man, was an interesting choice of reviewer for a book that seeks to reappraise the Second World War. My thoughts on that are summed up in the comments section at Charlottesville Words. More interesting is this colorful rant from my friend Rick:

Brendan, the review in today’s New York Times on Nicholas Baker’s new book brings to mind much of the reading I’ve been doing the past two years. It has to deal with the nature of terrorism, and in particular, state terrorism. It’s easy to write about authoritarian monsters such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. They provide easy access to narratives that comfort our sense that we stand outside the scope of such heinous deeds.

But when I read A. N. Wilson’s two-volume British history—starting with Queen Victoria’s era, and covering in volume two the first fifty years of the 20th century, ending with WWII and the demise of British Empire—it was clear that previously assumed heroic figures such as Winston Churchill were anything but. He comes across as a war-mad little drunkard, a pompous class-addled ass willing to mass murder people of Mesopotamia, India, the Sind . . . you name it. That fat little fucker loved to use the British Air Force to lay waste to civilian populations, rationalized by the idea they were uncivilized.

Gore Vidal, who’s work is imperfect but still impressive in scope—especially his historical saga that begins, chronologically, with Burr and ends with the Kennedy era—has similar judgments to make. Then, there’s the case of James Carroll, whose recent history of the Pentagon lays more blame with the United States for the Cold War than he does the Soviet Union.

Clearly, in the work of Wilson, Vidal, and Carroll, we are not “the good guys.” I believe indiscriminate use of Air Force bombing raids over civilian targets is a form of terrorism. And, I believe, our country’s leaders feel a lot easier in using this kind of war. Clearly, the United States gets upset when half a dozen of our finest are killed in action. But if a thousand or who-knows-how-many are killed by indiscriminate bombing, and the major part of those people are civilians, hey, no problem.

I’ve never been a fan of Nicholas Baker’s work. I’ve tried two of his novels and they didn’t hold my attention. His attention to detail may be fabulous in its minutiae, but as a reader, it doesn’t engross me. Guess you gotta like that kind of stuff to want to read on. I prefer a good yarn. 600 or 700 dense and detailed pages by James Carroll, with a hundred pages of endnotes, were far more engrossing. But after reading the review in today’s Times, I may have to dip into Baker’s latest. We need to rub our faces in our own complicity in world terror, and stop pretending that this country is beyond such perfidy.

I’ve read three or four of Baker’s books and they did hold my attention. I continue to laugh remembering the pornographic scenes in The Fermata, and I thought Box of Matches sublime. But I’m skeptical of Human Smoke. The form is literary (hence Tóibín as a reviewer) and designed, perhaps, to invoke feeling more than thoughtful consideration. Why not write a history if yours is a historical argument? And if it is not primarily a historical argument—if it is, for instance, primarily a political argument—why couch it in history?

Two Jazz Greats, a Balding, Pear-Shaped Cartoonist, and a Midget Convenience-Store Clerk Walk into a Bar

The lead review of last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review considers Beautiful Children, a novel by Charles Bock that introduces readers to a motley lineup of characters. There is, for instance, “a balding, pear-shaped cartoonist, burdened with the name Bing Beiderbixxe, playing Doom-like video games into his 20s and nurturing sociopathic fantasies.” Here I’m quoting reviewer Liesl Schillinger, who also mentions “a midget convenience-store clerk” and “a stripper who attaches sparklers to her pneumatic bosom to score extra tips.”

Schillinger is polite enough not to mention that Beiderbixxe’s burdensome name is what one might expect were Bing Crosby and Bix Beiderbecke to collide head-on. They were great friends, those two, so it’s a nice thing they didn’t. Still, such a name! Later in her review, Schillinger returns to Bing:

Early in the novel, Newell, Kenny and Beiderbixxe, the cartoonist, meet at a Saturday talk in a comics store called Amazin’ Stories, where Beiderbixxe has come to discuss his illustrated series, “Wendy Whitebread, Undercover Slut.” Newell isn’t impressed. Too young and undereducated to pick up on Beiderbixxe’s ironies, he’s bored. “Honestly, it wasn’t exactly easy to get jazzed about Bing Beiderbixxe,” he thinks, puffed up with preteen scorn. “From the looks of things, Newell wasn’t alone in this opinion. The store was largely empty, just a few underclassman types solemnly wandering the new arrivals racks, and three or four guys standing a respectful distance from the autograph table, nodding and listening, but seeming unconvinced.”

Again, Schillinger is too polite to point out the almost sophomorically obvious irony of not getting “jazzed” about a man whose very name tangles together two of the all-time greats of jazz. But that is to Schillinger’s credit and perhaps a sign of the book’s charm.

Albert Haim, it should be said, has never been so easy to charm as me. On his Bixography forum, the retired professor calls the name “tasteless.”

Which is exactly why I love it.

Here’s a number, recorded on June 10, 1928, that features both Bing and Bix.

• ’Tain’t So, Honey, ’Tain’t So  – Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra [Mp3]

The Nonfiction Pass

The New York Times sniffs at Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day. William Grimes labels the book “tabloid sociology,” suggesting that while in places it’s “riveting,” it’s also dated and sentimental. Which is fine. I didn’t much like it either. But nowhere in his review does he address Venkatesh’s actual writing. I understand that it’s not a literary novel, but works of nonfiction ought to be judged, at least in part, by the quality of their prose. Or am I alone in thinking this?

UPDATE: Steven D. Levitt just about pees himself endorsing Gang Leader for a Day, which, he writes, “is as good as any book I have read in a long time.” And he does this even while recognizing that sometimes such blurbs are, to be kind, inflated. Tyler Cowen, meanwhile, officiates an interesting discussion of Venkatesh’s ethics.

The projects aren't like the suburbs. Who knew?

My review of Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh can be found in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Venkatesh is best known for his contributions to Freakanomics. (Why do drug dealers live with their moms? It’s all about projects economics.) Gang Leader now tells the compelling back story of that research and in particular how Venkatesh—an Indian-born Deadhead from the suburbs of southern California—happened to fall in with a tough inner-city gang while a grad student at the University of Chicago.

I admire his research and the sometimes foolish courage it took to gather it. But the book is too poorly written to hold my interest in any kind of sustained way. A rather minor example: Venkatesh describes gang members who are preparing to retaliate after a drive-by shooting: “The scene was surreal, like watching an army prepare for war.” Where’s the editor here? There was nothing surreal about the scene at all; it was just as you might expect it to be. And these toughs were an army preparing for war.

When a writer is in the unusual position of being able to describe such action first-hand, readers demand better prose and substantially more insight. The story demands it. (The point of Gang Leader does not seem to be Venkatesh’s actual research, which can be found in his previous books, such as this one and this one.)

Worse than that, though, is Venkatesh’s persistent naïveté. Here’s what I wrote in my review:

Too often, though, Venkatesh’s wide-eyed innocence threatens to derail his narrative. For instance, what kind of sociologist—rogue or otherwise—considers it necessary to point out, 174 pages into his adventure, that “life in the projects wasn’t like my life in the suburbs”? What kind of sociologist takes years to figure out that cavorting with drug dealers might pose ethical problems? Or that actually taking over a gang for a day—a gang that deals crack, pimps women and administers various forms of violence—might “lay a bit out of bounds of the typical academic research”?

The oblivious kind, apparently.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of Venkatesh’s naïveté, but it severely inhibits the effectiveness of his storytelling when readers suspect they might know more about life on the street than their guide, their man on the inside. Of course, a radically naïve narrator can work in the hands of a skilled novelist. Meet Yu Yuan.

One last grumble: Out of nowhere, Venkatesh uses what appears to be Indian slang to reference everything from bullies to bullets. He does not provide warning or definition,  nor does he explain why he uses foreign slang instead of English. (I took a stab at researching the origin of these phrases but found nothing.)

Here’s an example: In a paragraph about being beat up as a boy, Venkatesh writes that most such fights “culminated in someone . . . pleading for the Mayney to reconsider, or with me rolling up in a fetal ball, which I actually found to be quite a good strategy, since most Mayneies didn’t want to fight someone who wouldn’t fight back.”

Huh?

Elsewhere a woman “had the fight of a Maynedog inside of her,” a gun-toting student “was thoughtful enough to remove the Mayneets during class,” and a police officer showed up wearing “a Mayneetproof vest.”

Not particularly important in the scheme of things, I suppose, just so, so odd.

IMAGE: Venkatesh looking not naïve at all on the cover of his new book

You Decide (Part 2)

From Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America by Gail Pool:

But Amazon has created a system that not only allows but encourages ethical and literary standards [of reviewing] far lower than those we find in print reviewing.

From Gabriel Botnick’s five-star Amazon review of Tuscan Whole Milk (1 Gallon):

“What happened today is that I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”

With these words, Jonas reached underneath the table and pulled out the gallon of milk from a cooler the owner had set there not even an hour earlier.

He continued—“Samantha, will you marry me?”—and offered her the jug of milk.

“Oh . . . I . . . ah . . . Jonas, of course I’ll marry you!”

Samantha was thrilled by the questioned and overjoyed with the milk. She threw her arms around Jonas and proceeded to shower him with kisses.

“It’s exactly like I’ve always wanted. How did you know? This is such a surprise. I have to call Mom and tell her. The girls won’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you got me an ENTIRE gallon of milk. Are you crazy? I love it!”

Jonas thought back to his conversation with Dean and knew he made the right decision. The woman of his dreams accepted his proposal and while he knew it was because she loved him, he was comforted by knowing that she also loved her milk.

PREVIOUSLY: You Decide

IMAGE: La Contessa’s Valley (oil on canvas) by Angela Amato

You Decide

Frankly at the moment review blogs are such jokes. – a member of the National Book Critics Circle

I love “The Dead”—and don’t think much of Joyce as a writer. Or, at least, I don’t think there’s anything of value in “Ulysses” or “Finnegan’s Wake.” – commenter Mike B. on the literary blog Black Garterbelt