Epizeuxis Epizeuxis Epizeuxis

Flight to Canada by Ishmael Reed

date completed: 6/20/2012

It’s incredibly infrequent for me to reread a book these days, after all, there are so many out there that I want to enjoy, and so precious little time. However, in this instance it felt like a special assignment, with it’s own reward outside of the mere enjoyment of the reading itself. The local bookmonger, Haight Street’s The Booksmith, holds a bimonthly event, the “Bookswap.” It’s a fantasticly fun time: about 30 or so people will meet up, over drinks and catered food, with a book in hand, selected from their collections based on the night’s theme. Then, splitting into groups of 5 or 6, they will discuss the book they brought, and after 20 minutes or so, will shuffle around into new groups and repeat the process. At the end, a big white-elephant exchange occurs, with everyone going home with a new book.

The upcoming theme is “Flashback,” where, if you are a longtime Bookswap attendee (I’m not), you may bring one of your favorite books you received at a previous meeting, or, in general, you can bring a book having to do with time travel in some regard, or a book that you read a long, long time ago. Pretty open, yes. So, Flight to Canada: Ishmael Reed’s raucous satire about the American South during the Civil War, replete with the completely anachronous inclusion of airplanes, television, and Reed’s own 70’s-style Black Postmodernism, which indeed I read a (fairly) long time ago, presented itself as the perfect choice. It is also short enough to have reread with little time following the announcement of the Bookswap’s theme, and short enough also to dissuade those who fear longer titles from avoiding grabbing it during the white elephant.

The novel focuses on Raven Quickskill, a runaway slave trying to, with money earned from having his poetry published, catch a flight to Canada. Naturally, trouble ensues, as his former master, the ludicrously decadent Arthur Swille, cannot abide his departure and sends some slavecatchers on his tail. Along the way, Raven encounters several other runaways, as well as a variety of allegorically defined characters, who represent various contemporaneous ideologies regarding race, the war, and the place of literature as a means of defining selfhood. There are cameos by Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others, each in their own hilarious vignettes. Reed does a good job in balancing his barbs among both whites and blacks living in the States, as well as Native Americans and Europeans.

Ultimately, the character who wins out at the end of the novel is Uncle Robin, a “domesticated” house-slave who Arthur Swille puts in charge of much of his plantation’s operations. Upon Swille’s death, it is revealed that Robin has sneakily altered Swille’s will such that the majority of the estate is left to him. Less fortunate are the rowdy, upstart younger generation of slaves, who in spite of winning their freedom, receive much hardship along the way. Without wishing to supply too much speculation, it is curious to wonder whether Reed saw himself in this scenario. He gained success by participating in the white man’s world: academia (he taught at Cal for 30 years), compliance, negotiation, as opposed to many of the radical black youth of the 70s, namely the Oakland-based Black Panthers, and related groups. The conflation of past and present seems particularly apt to fit this interpretation. Regardless of such extrapolations, Flight to Canada remains a joy to read, full of wit and poignant historical observation. I trust that, granted I can sell it well enough, it will be quite the hot commodity at the Bookswap.

Pros: fun, humorous read, with enough historical commentary to make it feel significant as a work of social literature as well

Cons: sometimes the characters are not completely fleshed out, and serve more as a vehicle for various ideas

Recommended for: fans of literary postmodernism, alternate-histories, the Civil War, race, the potential of linguistics to be a transformative experience

A Confederacy of Dunces

date completed: 6/11/2012

Where would we be without our troubled geniuses? Well, we’d have no Pink Moon, no Cafe Terrace at Night, no Infinite Jest. And we would have no A Confederacy of Dunces. John Kennedy Toole’s rollicking comic masterpiece, released eleven years following his suicide in 1969, eventually went on to capture a posthumous Pulitzer for fiction and a wide, cult following. Set in the heart of New Orleans in the early 60’s, Confederacy follows the misadventures of medieval savant Ignatius J. Reilly, the corpulent, belligerent, flatulent misanthrope extraordinaire.

After Ignatius’ mother, with whom the thirty-year old lives, drunkenly crashes her car into the side of building, the protagonist must undertake the his utmost nightmare, the acquisition of gainful employment, in order to pay off the damages. He works initially in an office of a pants manufacturer, however after being fired for inciting a race-riot against his mild-mannered boss, succumbs to trawling the French Quarter as a hot dog vendor. All the while he is attempting to write a grandiose manifesto outlining what his Dark Ages mindset views as the evils of the world. New Orleans’ and its denizens’ lack of “theology and geometry” are among his targets, and they play a rich role in Toole’s wonderful depiction of the tensions present in the post-war south.

A Confederacy of Dunces works incredibly well as a social and historical document, cataloguing the interactions of all manner of people, but the primary joys in its reading are undoubtedly the humorous elements skillfully woven into the text. Few topics are taboo as the farce satirizes sex, race, and religion in ways that are not completely denigrating, but strong enough elicit the Ha-Ha’s of any mindful reader. The plot is simultaneously absurd and imbued with a strange logic. Despite the comedy the predominates the writing, at the end of the novel there is an inescapable sense of melancholy. It seems that few or none of the characters are in a better place than where they began, and nobody seems to have learned anything. Ignatius remains insufferable, and as he departs New Orleans it seems improbable that his future will be any different than his past. He remains a relic of sorts, dually trapped in time and outside of it. So too his creator: it’s futile to hypothesize of what Toole could have been capable had he found success while living. At least we have his legacy, a hilarious masterwork that shines as a unique literary gem.

Pros: lotsa lulz, great period piece, fantastic characters

Cons: as a picaresque, it seems sort of aimless. feels fragmented a la the remains of Mennipean satire

Recommended for: generally, everyone. a very accessible work of fiction

A Place To Bury Strangers, This Will Destroy You, Dusted

Bottom Of The Hill, 6/8/2012

Bottom Of The Hill may well be the loudest venue in San Francisco, and at least for this sold-out show, it’d be hard to imagine otherwise. Dusted proved to be the lone exception to this otherwise noisiest of noisy shows. The side project of Holy Fuck’s Brian Borcherdt started off the night with a set of mostly restrained guitar tunes, a far cry from Holy Fuck’s manic, pulsing rhythms. Having seen HF headline Bottom Of The Hill for a noise pop-show some five-years ago (APTBS was an opener then), it was relatively shocking to see how downtempo and intimate the music was. He meandered through a dozen indie-lite songs as the audience slowly filled in, and though it was apparent that he was at least somewhat well-received, most people in attendance were ready for something a little heavier.

This Will Destroy You supplied just that. The four-piece post-rock (relative) newcomers out of Texas put on a set full of lulling melodies and bursting crescendos that easily transcended their recorded efforts. They played cuts from each of their LPs and EPs, and although they early-on succumbed to some of the familiar post-rock tropes (wait, they played another song that started out beautifully before erupting into pyromantics?), the second half of their performance demonstrated the full extent of their versatility. They absolutely had the crowd in rapture, waiting with bated breath for the next display of fireworks.

A Place To Bury Strangers finally took the stage at a quarter till 1am, but it was well worth the wait. Full disclosure: I wisely brought along my trusty pair of Hearos so as to prevent cataclysmic ear damage and to really, to better enjoy their show. By the time they finished, the once packed crowd had shrunk by half. It’s unclear whether this was the result of the die-hard TWDY fans checking-out midway through the set, or truly from the level of sonic discomfort APTBS can inflict, but at least one thing was certain: the dubious title of “the loudest band in New York” had been lived up to. Fans really should not have expected anything less, after all, the group’s frontman, Oliver Ackerman, runs a company that produces custom guitar pedals called Death by Audio. Just as impressive as the technical display of various extreme frequencies had to have been A Place To Bury Strangers’ amazing lighting arsenal. The shimmering, multi-colored bejeweled back wall of Bottom Of The Hill was the perfect receptor for the astonishing array strobe-projections and foggers employed by the band. Half the time the members could only be distinguished by their glowing silhouettes. It was truly a festival of stimulation. They played a fair chunk of their new album Worship, but the real (literal) showstopper came from the last song of their self-titled album, “Ocean.” After an extended psychedelic segue, the opening bass rumblings of this post-punk gem started to permeate the atmosphere, and the intensity didn’t subside a wink till the jet-liftoff screech of a conclusion had finished peeling away whatever sanity remained in the stunned audience’s skulls. It’s really a shame so much of the crowd were ill-prepared for such an onslaught, but in a certain sense, it makes it all the more special to know that: I was there, and better: I survived.

Kurt Vile, Black Bananas, True Widow

The Fillmore, 5/29/2012

It had been a while since visiting the always lovely Fillmore Auditorium, probably almost a year. Despite the draw of established bands, it’s run by LiveNation, whose service charges are always among the most cringe-worthy of the promotional world. I had bought my ticket for this show well enough in advance to have recovered from this particular sting, but really I should have just bought it at the door as the floor was probably a half-capacity. I’m not sure who was doing the booking for this tour, but it probably would have benefitted from playing a smaller venue. Alas! So it goes.

One moronic thing about the LiveNation site that is serves as Fillmore’s website in general is that, for shows, they only list one time, show times. Not doors. So when it says 8pm, there were probably only thirty-or-so people there to see True Widow, who was great. Admittedly, they were not necessarily the best band to “warm up” a crowd, what with their drawn-out, slow-grunge song structures, but they really nailed what they were doing. I’d read that they’ve been described as “slow-core,” but I don’t think they necessarily had much in common with say, Red House Painters or Low. They were definitely closer to post-rock, Slint-like with meandering, angular guitar hooks, and the occasional build to crescendo. Both the male guitarist and female bassist contributed vocals, which were more textural than anything, but worked perfectly. By the time they announced they had one song left, the group standing behind me couldn’t stop complaining about how much they sucked, but at least they weren’t belligerently heckling or anything.

The same could not be said for Black Bananas, who were a trainwreck. I guess the vocalist for BB was previously in Royal Trux, which has somewhat of a cult following I had never gotten around to sampling. Whereas Royal Trux, and subsequently the closely related RTX, are described as being “the last hair-metal band” or something like that, Black Bananas was essentially formless noise with a bunch of lousy beats. Two dudes twiddled knobs and tapped on some keyboards, while a single guitarist jammed out the whole performance. The vocalist pounded half a bottle of champagne onstage and wailed incoherently, putting on what she must have imagined to be something like a classic-rocker persona. The sound production was godawful and the noise just blended together like turds in a food processor. The singer was clearly pissed, but took her misguided frustration out on the audience by yelling at us for not clapping. I went and stood in the back because it was just plain too loud on top of everything else, and finally found relief when they departed.

Finally appeared Kurt Vile and the Violators. Despite playing a what seemed like a short set, with minimal audience banter, it was pretty good. It passed by almost too smoothly though, I had expected there to be a bit more sneering attitude out of Vile, but the dude just seemed really humble and reserved. The technicians had apparently figured out the sound after Black Bananas checked out; The Violators sounded great. It was essentially three guitarists and a drummer, except for periods when it was Kurt solo onstage, which happened periodically throughout the set for his softer, acoustic songs. He played a fairly mixed set of tracks from his great 2011 album Smoke Ring for My Halo and earlier material. He did not, however, play my favorite song of his, “Runner Ups” which I anticipated would be a staple of his live act. “Runner Ups” just totally epitomizes my idea of Vile’s professional personality, which I like to believe is at least fairly authentic. It also has been something of a personal mantra of mine the past few months, and well, you know. Overall, the music was great, but the show wasn’t terribly memorable, I think in part because of how completely subdued most of the crowd was. I’m going to mostly blame this on low ticket sales (which also resulted in the lack of signature Fillmore show posters being passed out at the end), but it was also a Wednesday and whatnot. So it goes.

The Music of Chance by Paul Auster

date completed: 5/24/2012

It’s funny to read a book like The Music of Chance immediately after finishing one like The Corrections. The Corrections is large in scope, beautifully written, and things fall into place in wonderful ways. There is a certain logic to it that makes total sense, characters are made to be held responsible for their actions, and the structure of the book reinforces these aspects. Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance is virtually the complete opposite. I’d read two of his books before getting into this one: Leviathan, something of a political thriller that focuses on a Ted Kaczynski-like character (though one who only bombs Statue of Liberty replicas across the US, not people), which was really great, as well as the New York Trilogy which is a collection of bizarre, interwoven deconstructed-detective stories, also highly recommended. But in The Music of Chance, Auster seemed to drop all the qualities of his work I previously found so appealing, and left instead a plot (knowingly) full of cliches, language (knowingly) flat as the surf in a pond, and a resolution (knowingly) completely anticlimactic.

So what’s the deal? Jim Nashe finds the wise-cracking poker whiz-kid Jack Pozzi (seriously) and lends him all the money he has to his name to take on a couple of eccentric millionaires in an all-night game of 7-card stud. The kid eventually loses everything, and in one last attempt to get the money back, Nashe offers to cut the deck against one of the players in a high-card double or nothing scheme and loses. When the lottery-endowed heavyweights learn Nashe doesn’t actually have the money, they offer to have him and Pozzi repay their debt by on their mansion’s grounds constructing a wall made of the stones of an old Irish castle, or else to call the police. The rest of the book details the struggle of building the wall, the setbacks they incur along the way, and the ultimate inanity of the task. Auster does a good job cranking up the intensity every so often so as to keep the reader engaged, but there is never any resolution to these moves.

I anticipated a strange book — Auster’s always are in one way or another, but what I hadn’t expected was one so absurd. Even the New York Trilogy, with all its po-mo tricks, remains grounded by some structure, evasive though it may be. The Music of Chance is like watching an epic chase scene that keeps going and going and then stops before the pursued escapes or is caught. It is an exercise in meaninglessness. In this regard it is comparable to The Stranger or The Trial, horrible things keep happening to the protagonist, usually the consequence of things beyond their control or resulting from the total arbitrariness of their own actions. In this way, The Music of Chance is almost a greater exercise in horror than The Corrections. In Franzen’s novel, the foundations of society are revealed to institutionalize a form of entrapment, from which only the moral and bright may find some reprieve. In Auster’s work, the universe itself is a void filled with nothing but nihilistic futility, where absolution, should it exist, is dealt blindly. Which vision is more accurate?

Pros: suspenseful, potentially deeply philosophical

Cons: lousy diction, narrative points and characters born from pastiche, potentially philosophically vacant

Recommended for: people who like absurdist or existentialist writing

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

date completed: 5/17/2012

Despite receiving several personal recommendations to read this book, it took me a long time to do so simply because of all the hype surrounding it. It won the National Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial, as well as numerous decade-best and all-time best rankings. It was a national bestseller. So, in my typical reluctance to dive into contemporary “pop” lit, I didn’t get around to reading it until a decade after its publication. Well folks, a mistake that was indeed. The book is rad. And it has aged extremely well.

The Corrections follows the family Lambert, focusing mostly on the elderly midwestern couple Alfred and Enid, as well as their three scattered offspring, Chip, Denise, and Gary. The characters are all extremely well developed, and each have various subplots that vary from hilarious to tragic, sometimes both at the same time. They navigate a world that has become increasingly infiltrated by the desiccating tendrils of consumer technology, pharmaceuticals, and economic inequality. It tackles all manner of themes typically included in the post-modern lit I love so much, but condensed into a realistic story about a family. Just how frighteningly real it is may be it’s most laudatory aspect. It’s what takes absurdity and turns it into horror. It’s the kind of book that I’m going to have to send to my parents to make them very, very uncomfortable with the assurance that they aren’t going to quit on it (like most of my book recommendations to them, hah). That, a decade later, all the ills described in The Corrections are now worse, is all too apparent.

Really, I shouldn’t be so surprised that I ended up loving The Corrections. After all, Jonathan Franzen is the kind of guy who shrugs off Oprah’s invitation to be in her book club, dismisses Twitter as a bunch of trivial garbage, and was once friends with the late David Foster Wallace. He has a cabin in Boulder Creek and an essay collection called How To Be Alone. In spite of these little odds and ends than contextually add to my enjoyment of the novel, it really is the kind of book everyone should read. It is a “big,” “important” novel, but written in a style that is pretty approachable. Amazing stuff.

Pros: quick read despite length, great characters, serious commentary on contemporary America

Cons: it will make you feel things that you may not want to feel

Recommended for: basically everyone, but especially people who appreciate other family novels with postmodern themes like White Noise or Infinite Jest

Flying Lotus, Low End Theory DJs

1015 Folsom, 5/4/2012

It isn’t terribly frequent that you get the opportunity to see the same act perform at the same venue twice within a year (I’m looking at you, Akron/Family). And while this or similar endeavors can be foolhardy exercises in chasing the dragon, Friday night’s set by Flying Lotus proved to be a pleasant exception. Granted, and here forgive me gentle reader, I’m not always the most eager to get on down to the club and put on my bass face, but I genuinely had a good time at the event.

After wandering through the cavernous complex that is 1015 Folsom / 103 Harriet for a restroom and a coat check, I eventually was able to find a nice bar on the back wall of the venue and chill out while waiting for my buddies. Certainly, from this location, or any other on site, I could feel the deep, sphincter-loosening groans of tweaked sub-bass tones peeling out of speakers designed for the express purpose of making the human body feel like it’s been sitting in a jacuzzi for three days, but generally I was able to avoid any Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque meltdowns. Once they arrived, we walked around and had a couple of beers and tried to talk while a couple of DJs took their turns on the stage. There was some MC freestyling, and the second-billed Dibiase was pretty successful in warming the crowd up. Just what the hell he was playing seemed pretty unclear to me. There was clacking, off-kilter snares aplenty, odd squelching noises, little bits of arpeggiated Nintendo sonic detritus. It was hardly dance music. It was weird. It was pretty great.

Flying Lotus finally took the stage at like 1:30, which I guess is deemed a reasonable hour for people who are going to taxi or drunk drive after the show instead of wait 45 minutes for the Muni, but oh well. This was really no surprise, as an identical situation had unfolded when I saw FlyLo there last summer. Anyway, the music was awesome, much better than what I remember from the last time. Perhaps it had to do with my location in the crowd: last time I was on the balcony, this time in the pit. Or the fact that I recognized more bits of Cosmogramma this time than before, you know, when he didn’t have a new album coming out in the immediate future. The new material sounded pretty good as far as I could tell. Lot’s of start-stop jump cuts, some pretty sexy breakdowns, some flickering samples of my two favorite English Heads, Portis and Radio. On one hand, I think I enjoy the music on Flying Lotus’ last LP more than I enjoy the remixes of it and other beats he brings to the dancefloor, and on the other, I haven’t had as much fun during my home listening sessions. It makes me even more curious to hear what will be on the new album. If Cosmogramma was his “jazz” album (for which I hold it in particular high regard among my limited forays into EDM), I have to wonder what his new driving influence is. No doubt, it will continue to bend the rules of club music, and push the genre forward. To what point remains to be seen.

Falling Man by Don DeLillo

date completed: 4/27/2012

“It is the form that allows a writer the greatest opportunity to explore human experience…For that reason, reading a novel is potentially a significant act. Because there are so many varieties of human experience, so many kinds of interaction between humans, and so many ways of creating patterns in the novel that can’t be created in a short story, a play, a poem or a movie. The novel, simply, offers more opportunities for a reader to understand the world better, including the world of artistic creation. That sounds pretty grand, but I think it’s true.” - Don DeLillo (2010)

Full disclose: Don DeLillo is one of my favorite all-time writers, if not favorite, period. In high school, I was thoroughly obsessed with Ernest Hemingway and J.D. Salinger, however since then, I have not felt so compelled to read an author’s complete cannon (with the possible exception of two other postmodern heavyweights, Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace). The quote above is a fairly accurate summarization for the reasons why I read. Though not evidenced from that snippet, he is specifically talking about the future of the novel in a technological and media driven world [thank you wikipedia]. Though he refers to the shortcomings of plays, poems, and films, which I don’t necessarily agree with, the absence of such popular forms as the Tweet or Status Update, which presumably make up the vast majority of reading done today, is telling of how lowly he values such mediums. The irony of the situation is that literary postmodernism, and the collage-like method that is sometimes used in its construction, is largely the precursor to the hyper-collaged micro-streams of information that pass for “communication” today. Although analysis of these collections of data can be used to construct a larger, general picture, particularly with the aid of some sort of mechanical aggregating system, it is pretty useless in generating critical thought in an individual. Such a lack of understanding of what was once a fundamental aspect of the human psyche is troubling. Prior to having planes slam into several of their most recognizable edifices, many Americans were ignorant of the amount of contempt other parts of the world held for them. So, after another decade of wars in the middle east, after another decade of doing little to improve the living conditions of the third world, another decade of environmental destruction and centralization of hegemonic power, will Americans again be shocked when another determined group of “terrorists” attempt to take Uncle Sam down a notch? Of course they will. Ignorance is bliss, and it’s viral.

Practically no other long-established literary writer has spilled as much ink on the subjects of terrorism (Mao II, Falling Man), the decay of American society (White Noise, Players), and the meta-effects of militant systems of globalization (The Names, Underworld) as DeLillo, and certainly no one has done it with the same degree of nuance and eloquence. So when it came time for New York-lifer DeLillo to write his 9/11 novel, it was a big deal, and I believe Falling Man is a tremendous success. A close reading of the book is exceptionally rewarding, as different passages throughout the book link back to one another, and virtually every section is loaded with metaphorical potentiality. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Falling Man is not the socio-political implications, but simply the journey the characters unwillingly embark upon in the wake of the event, and their respective destinations. The narrative focuses on estranged couple Keith and Lianne, and their brief but ultimately doomed reconnection in the wake of the attacks. Keith was an employee in one of the towers, and although he receives mostly minor injuries, the portrayal of his PTSD is a large focus of the book. Lianne’s character is characterized by the subject of memory, and she is largely shaped by her father’s suicide 20 years prior to the events in the story, as well as her mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s and eventual passing. Trapped in the middle is their young son Justin, who spends time gazing through binoculars out their apartment window in anticipation of seeing more planes veering into the skyline.

The title is derived from the photograph of the same name by Richard Drew (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man), as well a NYC performance artist who unannouncedly recreates the pose in public spaces while suspended by a rope. A series of analepses depicts some of the hijackers in the time leading up to the attacks, but these sequences are typically just the right length to add context to the novel in whole without distracting from the primary narrative. The novel’s beautifully surreal conclusion is among DeLillo’s best; whereas he is often content to let his stories end openly, the final pages of Falling Man are the perfect form of closure for the entirety that precedes them. Overall it is truly a breathtaking work, and wholly reaffirms the value of fiction in our era of distraction and short-memories. Recommended for all.

Pros: wonderful story set in the context of the most important historical event of my generation, masterful prose writing, the author of the book is named Don DeLillo

Cons: after a fantastic opening, it takes a couple of chapters to get back up to full speed (but never loses it from there)

Recommended for: okay, maybe not all, but at least everyone who has a fucking attention span and isn’t a complete imbecile

Real Estate, Twerps, Melting Toys

Great American Music Hall 4/24/2012

The time elapsed between when I purchased my ticket to see Real Estate and the date of the show itself was fairly insubstantial, a mere week. However, as I walked out of the Great American Music Hall last night, I was shocked to realize just how far my expectation for the show was from the event itself.

A coworker earlier in the day had expressed interest in possibly attending the show, and when I checked the GAMH website, there were still tickets available. When I arrived at the venue and picked up my tickets at will-call, a sign had been posted indicating that the show had sold out. This was the first indication of what a special event was in store. My buddy Joey and I were only able to catch the last song of Melting Toys, so I’ll refrain from passing judgment, although I will say they had an interesting setup involving a member simultaneously doing synths and drums on his laptop in addition to the two guitarists and bassist. Twerps was up next, a four-piece out of Australia. The frontman was very humble and amiable, and they worked their way through a solid set of songs not too distant from the sound we would soon receive from Real Estate. Three members of the group sang, and although they held my attention over the course of their set, they never quite lived up to the promise of their second song. This song, whose name I don’t know, meandered pleasantly through a couple verses and choruses, before slowly shifting into a really great build reminiscent of some post-rock tracks or something like Radiohead’s You And Whose Army? Gently picked guitar melodies gave way to furious strumming, and by the time the drum crescendo kicked in, all three string players were in full-on noise freakout. Impressive stuff, the likes of which I hope they pursue more down the road.

After what seemed like a half-hour after Twerps concluded, Real Estate finally took the stage, but not before an intermission playlist goaded about 50% of the crowd to light up their marijuana enjoyables. I’m certain I must have contracted some kind of contact-high. On record, Real Estate follows a very, very mellow formula of chiming guitar rhythms with tons of reverb and washed-out vocals primarily dealing in the subject of nostalgia. It could almost be described as minimalist jam-band fare with a pinch of folk tossed in. When performed live, however, these soft anthems were cranked up several levels in intensity, all without losing the soothing patina that made their album Days so intimately listenable. Not since Grizzly Bear’s rocking takes on their generally subdued baroque-pop tunes had I seen a band so thoroughly transform their studio recordings to an equally appealing sonic smorgasbord when presented live. Real Estate played mostly songs off their new album, as expected, as well as a few from their previous self-titled release, a cover, and a new track released on Record Store Day. Highlights included Municipality, Out Of Tune, and the set-closing (pre-encore) All The Same. From my vantage roughly in the middle of the pit, the audience was completely enraptured as head-nodding gradually gave way to swaying and occasionally a little legitimate rocking out. I actually saw a couple older dudes pogoing in place.

For all gruff criticism I espoused in my last concert post about Godspeed You! Black Emperor, claiming how the rise of meaningless apolitical music was tragically so entrenched in this time when the opposite is most needed, Real Estate proved to be quite an exception. Certainly, their tunes carry a heft of saudade, which is a gateway-drug to self-pity and inaction, but when reproduced in a manner that seems to create excitement for those whimsical memories, it subtly slips in the inspiration to try to recreate the good ol’ days. Whether such musings puttered like the anecdotal highway travelers of Out Of Tune through the minds of other attendees, I couldn’t say. But for anyone else who had come anticipating a slow, sedating performance, Real Estate successfully added a jolt of life into their plans for Tuesday night.

The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

Date Completed 4/19/2012

Neal Stephenson’s most iconic work may be 1992’s Snowcrash, and that novel has certainly earned its regard. However, his work following it, The Diamond Age, set in the same universe as the virtual-reality language-virus tale, is a leap forward in several regards. Set several centuries after Hero Protagonist’s adventures (and containing a cameo by an elderly Y.T.), The Diamond Age focuses on young Nell, and the workings involving the titular Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. In the book, the virtual interface that serves as the technological zeitgeist in Snowcrash has been replaced by nanotechnology, and the society that forms in the resulting post-scarcity world. This future earth is far from utopic, as may be expected, and it just goes to show that simply because the masses have been freed from the hardships of hunger and labor, social stratification is just as prevalent and a true egalitarian society seems more distant than ever.

In an attempt to give his granddaughter a boost above her already high social standing, Lord Finkle-McGraw hires leading engineer John Hackworth to develop an educational tool, which through chance events, comes to fall into the hands of impoverished, abused Nell. This magical device, which may well have served as a sort of ideal form for what the iPad aspires to be, becomes personalized to its owner, and throughout the course of the narrative trains Nell in everything from the high Victorian diction of the upper classes to basic unarmed melee fighting skills. Meanwhile, various warring phyles attempt to disrupt or preserve the status quo, which centers around the means of nanotechnological production. The Feed, as it is called, is an ur-factory of nanos, controlled by certain phyles, while attempts to replace it with the universally accessible Seed technology are suppressed. Through her training in the Primer, Nell eventually learns the source of the Seed and uncovers the secrets of its development, which ultimately leads to her role as a freedom fighter of humankind.

Certainly, the range of conceptual ramifications is difficult to convey in so short a review, but in them lies the center of the book. For readers expecting a run of the mill cyberpunk exercise, The Diamond Age may come across as stuffy in its Baroque scope and pretenses, but for the average literary connoisseur, the amount of philosophical heft here ought to be wholly engaging. Occasionally, the characters can be annoyingly archetypical, and initially there seems to be some ego-worship akin to objectivism, however as the plot develops it becomes clearer that the protagonists are really striving for societal progress and not merely individual gratification. Like most of Stephenson’s work, there is a nice balance of information-heavy passages and action, and is suspenseful enough to pull through the mercifully short chapters. As expected from a science-fiction novel of this sort, emotionally-charged drama is in relative short supply, but this shouldn’t discourage anyone who wishes to explore one version of the future. Perhaps to its greatest credit, 15 years after its publication, the world portrayed in The Diamond Age appears to loom ever closer.

Pros: tons of intriguing technological information that is digested into an accessible format, action-packed

Cons: won’t help you understand real-life as it exists today, your Lit 101 professor won’t take your opinions seriously (unless it’s Wlad Godzich)

Recommended for: nerds, impressionable youngsters