metachronistic

In late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, destroying the levees designed to protect the city, flooding 80% of it, and killing 1,464 people. City of Refuge, written by the author of Why New Orleans Matters and a resident of the city, is a fictional retelling of the disaster and it’s aftermath. It’s an emotional story, well written, and does a good job of making New Orleans and the devastation of Katrina real. Read next to Dave Egger’s Zeitoun, it’s hard to imagine how the maintenance of the levees, emergency response, and relief efforts could have been worse. Thankfully, book mostly stays clear from making political arguments or assigning blame, focusing mainly on how two different families cope with the destruction of the city they lived in.

I enjoyed it—learning more about the disaster and the rhythms and flavor of the city itself—but I wouldn’t recommend it except for readers interested in another perspective on Katrina.

After my disappointment that Skippy Dies was eliminated from The Morning News Tournament of Books, I decided I should read the book that beat it, and which eventually won in the final round by a one-vote margin, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad, just out in paperback. After beating Skippy, Goon Squad was beaten by Franzen’s heavyweight, but came back in the zombie round and eventually met Freedom (again) in the finals.

Some of the comments from judges choosing Goon Squad:

• Sarah Manguso: Franzen made me weep for lost love, but Egan reminded me that death is coming.
• Jennifer Weiner: Egan gets my vote, because if Franzen takes the prize, then the terrorists win (and because even if he doesn’t, you know the Los Angeles Times will run his picture anyhow).
• Anthony Doerr: Which of these two books might help, to borrow Zadie’s Smith’s clause, “shake the novel out of its present complacency?” Egan’s.
• Michele Filgate: There’s no comparison. Egan’s novel is innovative and playful, while simultaneously smart and captivating.
• Andrew Womack: For me, this decision comes down to pacing, and Franzen is the Pink Floyd to Egan’s Sex Pistols; by the end of Freedom I couldn’t take another meandering guitar solo, while I was dazzled by how much Goon Squad packed into such a compact space.

Jennifer Egan (on hearing she won):

• A rooster will fit perfectly into our Brooklyn landscape…our sons will be thrilled; our two cats, even more so.

I just finished it, and I was blown away. I wasn’t expecting to like it much: a “novel” of connected short stories, ho hum. An entire chapter done using a piece of software implicated in the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster (PowerPoint), yetch. But the way the stories weave through time and from one character’s viewpoint to another, never so obvious as to touch the same scene twice, but covering such a wide swath of time was amazing. For me, it wasn’t until the last chapter, which takes place at some point in the 2020’s, that the collective effective of the stories really came together into a very real feeling for the things we gain and (mostly) lose in our lives; the way our decisions combine to make a life.

The final contest in the Tournament really was a fitting one—both Egan and Franzen are attempting to describe modern life in America (as cliché as that sounds). Franzen does this by filling his book with the full lives of his three main characters. Egan does it by sprinkling her chapters with short bursts from a wide range of related characters, varying perspective, time, age, and narrative style in each. The challenge for Franzen is how to tell the full story of three people without the reader growing sick of them. The challenge for Egan is getting us to actually care about the characters in the short time we spend with them, or at the very least be willing to listen to what they have to say.

She succeeds, spectacularly.

I just finished Swamplandia!, the first novel by one of The New Yorker’s 20 under 40 list (the author, Karen Russell was born in, gaak!, 1981) about a family of alligator wrestlers in the Thousand Islands region of Florida. Despite that description, it’s a lot less Geek Love, and a lot more non-traditional Bildungsroman. I enjoyed the book, particularly how convincingly the environments of the characters were drawn. The details, sights, sounds and smells of the Florida swamps and jungles, and the unpleasant realities of a low-income job at an amusement park (or really anywhere else):

…the hours contracted or accordioned outward depending on several variables that Kiwi had catalogued: difficulty of task, boredom of task, degree to which task humiliates me personally.

The main character is the girl Ava, who narrates her half of the story in the first person, but I found I enjoyed Kiwi and his struggles on the mainland more. Once the story got going (which for me, was when all the characters had left Swamplandia!) I ripped through it in a couple days.

I hadn’t realized how much southern Florida had been destroyed by a variety of ill-advised Army Core of Engineers projects and non-native species introductions. This book, and Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country (which I read in 2009) really makes you appreciate what the place must have been like before humans got around to messing around with it.

I’ve started reading Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon’s masterwork. I tried to read it many years ago, and gave up after 100 pages. This time around, I’m familiar enough with Pynchon’s themes and style of writing that I don’t think I’ll run into the trouble I had before. I’m reading it with Steven Weisenburger’s Companion as well as Zak Smith’s page by page Pictures, which are helping to make it easier to discern the narrator and location of the action in each episode. Smith’s illustration for the following quote appears to the right. Page 49 of the book, which takes place during the Nazi V2 rocket attacks on London:

All over this frost and harrowed city…as once again the floor is a giant lift propelling you with no warning toward your ceiling—replaying now as the walls are blown outward, bricks and mortar showering down, your sudden paralysis as death comes to wrap and stun…and the sight of your blood spurting from the flaccid stub of artery, the snowy roofslates fallen across half your bed, the cinema kiss never complete, you were pinned and stared at a crumpled cigarette pack for two hours in pain, you could hear them crying from the rows either side but couldn’t move.

So far I’m really enjoying the book, despite the investment I’ve decided to make in trying to understand everything I’m reading. Pynchon, as always, writes like a brilliant madman.

Here’s a brief conversation, overheard on the Pynchon-L mailing list, for those of you on the fence about reading GR:

Once again, I’ve neglected my blog. My new job, the pressures of getting all our work done this summer, and the rest of life has kept me away.

Events: We’ve taken to swimming in the Creek. During the warmth of early June (which hasn’t returned since…) the Creek temperature rose to 65°F, and swimming was actually quite nice. I’m hoping we’ll get a few more warm days before fall so we can swim out there again.

Projects: I’ve made no progress at all on the new shed, but have repaired the bridge and got our digital antenna installed on the roof. I also replaced our chimney cap with the variety our chimney sweep prefers. Things left to do: Build the shed!, repair the glycol line that keeps the septic pipe thawed, fix and insulate the sewage treatment plant discharge pipe, reinforce the shed roofs, obtain and chop two more cords of firewood, install a heat shield behind the wood stove, get curtains for the two large downstairs windows and the sliding glass doors, and (finally) consider hiring a plumbing and heating company to replace and upgrade our system.

Books: I’ve read quite a few. Here’s a summary judgement on each:

• McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Volume 26: Enjoyable fictions, interesting format, no real standouts for me.
• The Rest is Noise: Fantastic look at the music and history of the 20th century. Alex Ross is one of my favorite New Yorker writers and this book doesn’t disappoint.
• Ambitious Brew: Interesting history of beer brewing in the United States. It dispels many of the classic beer myths (the most classic being that the big super-brewers ruined American beer, only to be “saved” by the micros), and tells a great story. Prost!
• Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name: A very enjoyable book with a very memorable female lead. Vida has a great abbreviated and expressive way of writing that was refreshing.
• The Echo Maker: I’ve been looking forward to this one for so long, that I think the reading of it couldn’t be anything but a disappointment. I enjoyed it as a meditation on brain injury, but I felt like the characters were a little overwrought and stiff.

The rest: Andrea continues to progress toward her goal of running the Equinox Marathon. She’s out running sixteen miles (16 miles!) right now. I’m super proud of her. Meanwhile, I’ve been bicycling to work almost every day (13 miles round-trip) and the two of us are working toward doing 100 push ups in six weeks. Maybe by the next photo of me in the Creek, I’ll be ripped.

Probably not…

I wish there were stronger ways than words to express how ruinous George W. Bush has been to our country. From McSweeney’s Where to Invade Next:

So I came back to see him a few weeks later [a few weeks after 9/11], and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, ‘Are we still going to war with Iraq?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s worse than that.’ He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, ‘I just got this down from upstairs’—meaning the Secretary of Defense’s Office—‘today.’ And he said, ‘This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years.’
—General Wesley Clark.

The seven countries Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted to “take out” are: Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Syria, Sudan and North Korea. This book, edited by Stephen Elliot lays out the case the Bush Administration would like to have made had their plans in Iraq not gone so horribly wrong (“Mission Accomplished”, jackass). It’s quite sobering reading, because these really are bad places, and in the case of Sudan, something really needs to be done. But most of these countries (all of them?) were made far more dangerous by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and it’s clear (to me anyway) that this is pretty much our fault. We elected Bush (sort of). Frigging twice (kinda). We elected the Congress that rubber stamped everything he did. We allowed the media to become a corporate shill for the Administration. And now all of the good will we might have had to effect change in the world is lost. To help in Sudan.

Another busy couple weeks, but I did manage to finish John Brandon’s first novel, Arkansas. I wasn’t as impressed with it as I have been with many of the McSweeney’s books introducing new authors, but that’s not to say it wasn’t a good book. It’s about small time crime in Arkansas, and sitting here recalling the characters and plot, it suddenly occurs to me that the Cohen brothers could make a great film out of it. I hadn’t drawn that connection while I was reading it, but now that I’m done I realize the book has a genuine sense of place that’s part of the good Cohen movies, and the two main characters often talk right past each other in a way that reminds me of the characters in Blood Simple. Plus: odd violence that’s not necessarily expected at the time it happens.

It’s probably not going to stick with me the way Icelander or The Children’s Hospital did, but I can certainly recommend it. And not insignificantly, it’s a beautifully produced hardcover with a sewn binding and some nice gold leaf on the cover.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is Haruki Murakami’s most well regarded book, and the first of his books I’ve read. I’m sure I will be reading more. It reminded me a lot of Paul Auster, another of my favorite authors. In both author’s books, reality is often in question, there are many threads to the story that are often tied up together in unlikely ways, and characters suffer strange fates in isolating places.

Here, the book begins with the out-of-work main character looking for his cat, taking care of the house while his wife is at work. As the story progresses, stranger and stranger things start happening to him, and eventually, you wonder which parts of the story are real and what parts are imagined. But unlike many stories like this, very little suspension of disbelief is required.

I enjoyed everything about the book. The historical digressions into Japan’s wartime campaign in Manchuria were fascinating after reading Human Smoke, it was good to read a book with women in it for a change (I’ve been reading a lot of dry non-fiction recently), and as someone taking a vacation between jobs, I really identified with the main character and his struggles to understand the world around him and where he fit into it.

Highly recommended.

The afterword and dedication of Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization tells you a lot about the perspective Nicholson Baker has in telling the story of World War II up to January 1942:

This book ends on December 31, 1942. Most of the people who died in the Second World War were at that moment still alive. Was it a “good war”? Did waging it help anyone who needed help?

. . .

I dedicate this book to the memory of Clarence Pickett and other American and British pacifists. They’ve never really gotten their due. The tried to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from happening. They failed, but they were right.

Whether or not a different approach to the “Great War” would have helped those who needed help cannot be answered, but after reading this book you will truly see how horrifying the war was, and how those who waged it contributed to it’s horrors. That the title of the book refers to the smoke from the incinerators at Auschwitz should be enough to give you pause over whether you want to read this book. It’s pretty devastating. But it does serve as a powerful antidote to the false historical idea that the Allies fought the good fight to liberate the world from the Axis evil. There’s not much good in war, even a “necessary” war like World War II, and there was plenty of evil among all leaders engaged in the struggle.

I found three main threads in the book. First, and probably most important was the nature of the way the war was brought to the citizens of Europe. Cities on both sides were bombed using brutal techniques that typically started with incendiary bombs to set blacked-out targets on fire, followed by high energy exposives targeting the fires themselves (if it’s burning, it must be something worth destroying), and ending with delayed-action bombs “so as to prevent or seriously interfere with fire fighting, repair and general traffic organization” (from a British Air Ministry report on bombing policy, April 24, 1941). Churchill is quoted several times using the phrase “Business before Pleasure” to describe targeting military targets before civilian ones. Despite this intention, the vast majority of British and German bombs fell on citizens, not military targets. The British blockade of Europe also brought the war to Axis countries in the form of famine. Churchill explained that fats make bombs and potatoes make synthetic fuels that would be used against Britain. Herbert Hoover wrote: “The notion that the special type of food we needed for children (milk, chocolate, fats, and meat) would be used for munitions was sheer nonsense.” As in Bush’s war in Iraq, Hoover quotes the old adage: truth is war’s first fatality.

The second main thread concerns the plight of the Jews. It appears from the quotes in this book as though Hitler’s main objective was to remove the Jews from Europe, and when he could find no place to send them (including Palestine, Madagascar and any other country willing to take them), he began his program of extermination. Again, there’s no way to know what might have happened if the Allies had offered refuge to the Jews in Axis countries, but it’s hard to imagine anything worse than what happened.

The final argument working through the book is the ways in which the United States goaded the Japanese into their pre-emptive strike on Pearl Harbor. Without all the evidence, it’s hard to decide if this is a valid argument, but it is clear that the United States had many opportunities to relax tensions with Japan and prevent a Pacific war. Instead we were supplying the Chinese and Soviets with bombers, fuel, pilots and training, while at the same time, building up our own bases surrounding Japan. Churchill seemed convinced that the United States would enter the war once the Germans started bombing England, and then when France fell, but it took the attack on Pearl Harbor to get us in. Baker’s book has something to say about how that happened.

These three main arguments, and others, weave their way through the book’s chronologically arranged short presentations of facts. It’s a very effective way to make a simple argument about the nature of war, and despite the horrors on the page, it’s an entertaining way to receive history. The problem is that without any objective (or even subjective) interpretation of the passages, or a stated intention toward balance and objectivity, it’s hard to evaluate the arguments that formed in my mind. I have no doubt about the facts Baker includes, but there are likely to be facts that don’t follow the general patterns on display. Nevertheless, if you’re interested in what lead up to the entry of the United States into World War II, or if you have doubts about the heroic storyline presented in the multitude of “Great War” documentaries, this book should be included alongside more traditional historical accounts of the war.

Introduction

I’d never even heard of a cantata before getting the set of Bach CDs, but if one is to believe the following quote, they’re a very important part of Bach’s music:

Bach’s greatest achievement is the Cantata Project, the five annual cycles which he began when he came to Leipzig and finished five years later. Because of losses in manuscripts and only the barest suggestion of the overriding design, we are probably doomed to see this monument as a series of individual works rather than a mighty collection of 300 parts with hundreds of movements.
Douglas Cowling, 2007-May-06, Bach Cantatas mailing list

I’m starting my cantata listening with the three works written for the first week in Advent, which was last Sunday, and happens to be the beginning of the church year. I doubt if I’ll be able to listen to all of Bach’s cantatas in order, but I’ve listed the upcoming dates for all the cantatas, the place of all of Bach’s works on the Bach Edition CDs, as well as my progress listening to them on this page.

Here, I’m listening to cantata 61 from CD III-1, cantata 62 from III-28, and cantata 36 from IV-5. They’re all conducted by Pieter Jan Leusink and the Netherlands Bach Collegium with the Holland Boys Choir. Soloists include Ruth Holton (soprano), Sytse Buwalda (alto), Nico van der Meel (tenor) and Bas Ramselaar (bass). In reading reviews of Leusink’s complete cycle, many commentators seem to specifically dislike Buwalda, and complain that Leusink’s interpretations aren’t very considered. Leusink recorded the entire set of Bach’s cantatas in a single year, and the reviews usually mention this as a possible reason for why his cycle isn’t as polished and “correct” as other cycles. I haven’t been listening to cantatas long enough to really know if these complaints are valid or not.

I also downloaded Philippe Herreweghe’s Adventskantaten CD from eMusic. It’s got the same three cantatas on it, and Herreweghe’s cantata recordings are highly regarded by the same people who aren’t all that fond of Leusink, so it should be a good comparison.

I’m using several references to guide my listening. First, and foremost is the Bach Cantatas website. They’ve got commentary culled from the mailing list of the same name for all the cantatas and many of Bach’s other works. For a mailing list, there’s an amazing diversity of very expert opinion on all aspects of Bach’s music. Second is Simon Crouch’s Listening Guide to Bach’s Cantatas, which provides a short summary of all the cantatas and his opinions on them. Finally, I borrowed a copy of W. Gillies Whittaker’s two volume The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach from the library. It’s out of print, but is available from used booksellers for a reasonable price. It’s a pretty detailed look at each cantata, but it suffers a bit because it doesn’t reflect recent scholarship regarding Bach. Alfred Dürr’s The Cantatas of J.S. Bach is apparently the best source of contemporary information, and it includes parallel German / English translations for all the cantatas, but none of the local libraries have a copy, and a new paperback is more than $70 from amazon.com. Sight unseen, that’s an awfully expensive book, but if I really get into the cantatas, maybe it’ll be worth it.

I’ve listened to these three cantatas more than 30 times in the last week and a half, so it’s time to write about them and move on to something else.

Cantata BWV 61, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Come thou blessed Savior, come)

This cantata was first performed December 2, 1714 in Weimar. Bach held the title of concertmeister at the time, and was formally required to compose new church music once a month. This cantata is also known to have been performed November 28, 1723 in Leipzig .

The first movement starts with a great chorus, with violins and other stringed instruments playing the melody from Martin Luther’s hymn, which names the piece. It’s a great introduction to the work, and for me, to the cantata form.

Next is a recitative sung by the tenor backed by a violin and organ, followed by an aria that’s also sung by the tenor. According to the Wikipedia, the difference between a recitative and an aria is how speech-like the rhythm of the vocal accompaniment is, and I guess in that context the tenor is really singing the third movement in time with the melody, rather than speaking over it as he does in the second movement. It’s cool to have one follow the other with the same singer so I can hear the difference between them.

The fourth movement is another recitative, but this time the strings are plucked (pizzicato). The passage being sung comes from Revelations 3:20: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock.” and the plucked strings is meant to evoke the sound of Jesus knocking. It sounds a bit like a foolish compositional trick, but it really does work, especially at the point in the music. I’ve always disliked Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring because of the clopping sounds meant to evoke the sound of horses, but I don’t mind Bach’s use of pizzicato here.

The work concludes with a beautiful soprano aria and an absolutely fantastic chorale. I like the last movement best; it’s really joyful. Unfortunately, it’s also really short, and to me, seems to end the cantata prematurely.

As far as the two different recordings I have (Leusink and Herreweghe), the timing differs between the two works, but the instrumentation, singing and expressiveness of the piece are very similar between the two. I really can’t complain about either, and I don’t know if I would even be able to recommend one over the other. This surprises me a little bit because most of the commentary I’ve read about Leusink and the singers have placed his versions near the bottom of the available choices. Not so in my ears!

Cantata BWV 62, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Come thou blessed Savior, come)

Cantata 62 was first performed on December 3, 1724 in Leipzig as part of Bach’s second annual cycle of cantatas. He wrote five complete cycles during his first years as capellmeister at the St. Thomas School (an incredible output given all the performances, practice and other labors he was required to do in addition to essentially composing a new work each week), but unfortunately most of the last two cycles have been lost.

This cantata is based on the same hymn as 61 and has a similar structure of a chorus, an alternating series of arias and recitatives, and a final chorus. Compared to 61, I like the opening chorus even more because it seems like the instrumental part has more of a chance to develop before the chorus comes in, making it that much more dramatic. There’s also a lot of counterpoint among the singers that I like.

Next we’ve got a tenor aria, bass recitative, and bass aria. Only the bass aria is interesting because of the strong instrumentation. For this movement, I do prefer Herreweghe’s version over Leusink because it’s very forcefully played and sung. Leusink seems to drag it out and it loses a lot of it’s power.

The final recitative before the closing chorus is a duet for the soprano and alto singers, which makes it different from the movements thus far. The chorus for this cantata is even shorter than the chorus of cantata 61, but it’s also not as good. The best part of this cantata is the opening chorus, by a long shot.

I like Herreweghe’s version quite a bit more for this cantata, mostly due to the quickened pacing which makes it brighter and more urgent sounding. The opening chorus and the bass aria really benefit from the faster timing.

Cantata BWV 36, Schwingt freudig euch empor (Swing joyfully yourselves on high)

This sacred version of cantata 36 comes from Bach’s reworking of several secular cantatas (versions 36b and 36c still exist) and was first performed December 2, 1731.

Here we have a completely different pattern, with an opening chorus, followed by alternating chorales and arias. Like the other Advent cantatas (maybe cantatas in general?) it ends with a chorale. There are no recitatives here, which is apparently unusual, but for me is a welcome change.

The opening chorus has a lot of the counterpoint I like from the opening of cantata 61, but here the instrumentation features woodwinds (Oboe d’amore) rather than strings carrying the melody. The rest of the cantata carries along similarly to the chorus, with a variety of duets, arias and chorales and more woodwind accompaniment. The melody is very simple and is easy to pick out throughout the work.

I like the soprano aria in the seventh movement not so much because of the singing, but because the voice and the featured violin (violone?) complement each other very well.

Similar to cantata 62, Leusink is slower and more leisurely than Herreweghe. That works well for the soprano aria, but not so well for the opening chorus. I also like Leusink’s soprano (Ruth Horton) more than Sibylla Rubens. Horton sings more gracefully and emotionally, while Rubens really belts it out like an opera singer. I think the aria needs a lighter touch. Anyway, it’s a mixed bag here and I can’t outright recommend one version over the other. And in general, I don’t think you can go wrong with either recording. The music is too good.