When I saw Metric last September at Radio City Music Hall as guest of live music buddy Steve Conte we were startled to hear Emily Haines welcome to the stage one of her musical heroes, Lou Reed. He came out for two songs, standing side by side with Haines. I was so sorry to learn of his passing today, at age 71. Here are my pictures of them from that special show.
#FridayReads, October 25–Grant Lawrence’s The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie. Very excited to begin reading my copy of the new book by my friend, Canadian broadcaster Grant Lawrence, which just landed in my mailbox this afternoon. The book, which chronicles his uneasy relationship with the Canadian national sport, was officially launched last night with an event in Vancouver, BC. Grant loves to meet with booksellers and readers and is one of the hardest working authors I’ve ever observed. On his website you can find details on the extensive book tour he’s taking, with stops in many Canadian cities between now and December 12.
I loved Grant’s first book Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and other Stories from Desolation Sound, a memoir of the many summers he’s spent in the wilds of coastal British Columbia, in the environs of a family cabin on the vividly named Desolation Sound. It went to #1 on the BC Bestseller List, won the BC Book Prize for the 2010 Book of the Year, an award given by booksellers, and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction. I’m hoping for similar success for his new book, which I will begin reading this weekend.
[cross-posted at my other blog Honourary Canadian]
The above trailer for a terrific looking new documentary, “Following the Ninth,” about performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in different locales around the world, has me eager to see this new film which will be screened at Lincoln Center beginning October 29th. It’s co-produced by media writer and author Greg Mitchell, whose book, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits–and the President–Failed on Iraq, with a Preface by Bruce Springsteen, I published with him in 2008. Greg and his co-producer Kerry Candaele have also written a current book, Journeys With Beethoven: Following the Ninth. You can find more info at Greg’s blog, via this link.
The past few months have been terrific for new films about music, with two earlier documentaries that I really enjoyed, which I wrote about and posted on this site. The first was on the blues. This is a couple sentences I wrote about it:
“It is a joyous film with superb archival footage, moving interviews, and high-quality audio of many great blues performances. It also narrates a moving story about how aspiring teenage musicians like guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboard player Barry Goldberg, from affluent parts of Chicago, began frequenting the clubs and bars where black titans of the blues like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf were then in residence.”
You may read the whole post via this link: Great New Documentary on the Blues, “Born in Chicago”.
The second film was on American guitarist and fabulist John Fahey. This is part of what I wrote about it:
“He developed a prodigiously creative vernacular guitar and compositional style that reflected blues, folk, and traditional American sources while also drawing on Charles Ives, Bela Bartok, Gregorian chant, and world music, before that term had any currency. As a facilitator and label owner, he would do things like send a postcard cold to a black bluesmen c/o General Delivery at a Mississippi delta town post office where he hoped the man still lived, asking: “Would you like to record for the Takoma Records label?”; thus did he bring to public awareness the music of Booker (later known as ‘Bukka’) White, Charley Patton, and Skip James.
You may read my whole post here: “In Search of Blind Joe Death,” New Documentary on John Fahey.
It’s a great season for films on music, especially as I think about the upcoming “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which from the trailer appears to be a feature film very freely adapted by the Coen Brothers from the late Dave Van Ronk’s memoir Mayor of MacDougal Street. Here’s the trailer for it:
I was really glad to discover a great new place for literary events and book talk last night in Brooklyn. The venue is Mellow Pages Library and Reading Room and it’s located on Bogart Street just steps away from the Morgan St. subway stop of the “L” train in Bushwick. It’s on the ground floor of a loft building that also houses a number of art galleries. It’s big, square-ish room with handsome walnut paneling and big windows, with a true library ambiance. Their tumblr includes this statement: “Mellow Pages is an independently-run library & reading room located in Brooklyn, NY focusing on providing limited-print fiction and poetry to the neighborhoods of Bushwick, East Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy. With a collection of over 1,200 titles and zines, come check out the space and have a coffee, crack into a new one.” The picture to the left shows how they feature and display the amazing zine collection they hold.
I went there to represent Talonbooks of Vancouver BC, whose francophone author Daniel Canty was launching his new novel, Wigrum in a joint reading with Oana Avasilichioaei, his translator. Here’s a link to the full post on the reading that I’ve just published with pertinent links and lots of pictures at Honourary Canadian, my second blog which I launched about a month ago.
I’ve been dipping in to the novel all week in advance of the reading and am really loving it. It is a kind of Borgesian exercise, ostensibly the census of an idiosyncratic collection of objects, owned at one time by the elusive figure, Sebastian Wigrum. The printed book itself is beautifully presented with crisp typography and clean design on bright white paper. Precise drawings, each one well printed, depict each of the 149 objects in Wigrum’s mysterious collection. This imaginary world has also produced a novel with marginal notes and an index. At the Honourary Canadian post, you can read about five of the objects catalogued in the novel. Below are the front and back covers of Daniel Canty’s handsome book. I highly recommend exploring this fictional universe.
Last summer I wrote a #FridayReads essay that recalled a 1979 visit to my bookstore Undercover Books by a young novelist named Stephen King–then only in the early years of what would become his decades-long career as a bestselling novelist. While discussing his new book Dead Zone he excitedly recommended to me a novel from his publisher, The Dogs of March by Ernest Hebert. I eagerly told King that I had already read Hebert’s book and that I would from then on tell my customers about his endorsement of it, and recommend it even more energetically. Soon after King’s visit to my bookstore, I wrote a letter to Hebert c/o his editor, the late and much-missed Alan Williams at the Viking Press (who was also King’s editor then). I let Hebert know that I’d enjoyed The Dogs of March, and that he and his novel had boosters in Stephen King and at my bookstore. After, that Ernie, as I came to know him, and I carried on a correspondence that continued for several years. I also visited him and his family on trips I made from Cleveland back to New Hampshire, where I had attended Franconia College earlier in the ’70s. One of the things that Ernie did with great skill in The Dogs of March was to juxtapose longtime residents in New England towns with incomers, or as he puts it, “natives vs. newcomers.” He wrote compelling fiction about all kinds of characters, and did it with a sharp edge of social observation.
While Ernie and I later fell out of touch, I kept an eye out for his work, noting that he had moved on from working as a newspaper reporter when I first met him, to teaching writing at Dartmouth College, all while he continued to write and publish novels. In fact, The Dogs of March was followed by a string of related books, collectively known as the Darby Chronicles, named after the town where he had set them, as well as a historical novel and a piece of speculative fiction. After I wrote about Stephen King and The Dogs of March last July, Ernie and I got back in touch, a happy reunion. He writes a superb blog of his own filled with writerly craft, which I subscribe to and visit regularly. This week Ernie published a new post informing readers that in Fall 2014 the University Press of New England will publish Howard Elman’s Farewell, the seventh book in the Darby series.* I recommend that new post, where he also writes about a guide to the Darby Chronicles he’ll be publishing online. His blog is filled with keen reflections showing how a career novelist thinks about his books–before they’re written, while they’re being composed, and once they are completed and out in the world. I also recommend his books of course, and suggest if you’re just starting on them you begin with The Dogs of March.. Here’s a picture gallery of all my editions of Ernest Hebert’s books, with author photos, many of them taken by his wife Medora Hebert:
* The seven books in the Darby Chronicles are The Dogs of March; A Little More Than Kin; Whisper My Name; The Passion of Estelle Jordan; Live Free or Die; Spoonwood; and (forthcoming) Howard Elman’s Farewell.
This is a link to my coverage of the annual CMJ Music Festival at the sister blog to this one, Honourary Canadian. The post, Three Fun Showcases for Great Canadian Acts at NYC’s CMJ Music Festival, includes lots of pictures like the one of Yamantaka//Sonic Titan at the top of this post, and a video of the band Kandle, from Montreal.
Posted yesterday at HonouraryCanadian.com, sister blog to this one, a brief post with a photo of some amazing baking done by my wife Kyle Gallup, an artist in paints and pastry. 
Last June at BEA I picked up an advance reading copy of the forthcoming book Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words by psychology professor John W. Pilley, then made it my #FridayReads one week in August. I’m writing again about it now because Shelf Awareness posted a charming video trailer for the book today. This amazing book on the science of the canine mind will officially be published October 29.