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I can’t recall ever seeing a documentary that gave me more shivers than Townes Van Zandt Be Here to Love Me. It’s a much more than satisfying biography of the folk singer/songwriter who passed away in 1997. The filmmakers have managed to track down tons of amazing, archival footage, not just of some wonderful performances of Townes’s classic songs, but lots of candid, behind the scenes footage. Combine that with some frank interviews with some of his contemporaries, like Guy Clark, Steve Earle and Kris Kristofferson. Mix in some bits by his various wives, children and his sister, and you ended up with a pretty rounded portrait of as complicated and as interesting a person to carry a guitar over these hills. At times heartbreaking, at times hilarious, sometimes scary, sometimes the most beautiful thing ever, I couldn’t imagine a more satisfying film about Townes Van Zandt, absolutely one of my favorite songwriters ever. 1:46 PM >>> 0 comments

Fuir, the most recent novel by Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a strange, but wonderful one. His seventh, but only the second I’ve read so far - it seems very different in tone from Television (which is available in English from Dalkey Press), more poetic, more adventurous, more mysterious. Some of those adventurous sections are probably the sections of the book that are a little less successful. The first two-thirds of the book, set in Shanghai and Beijing, never give a particularly effective impression of those cities, could be anywhere. But those same sections also feature some of the book’s most effective moments - when our wanderin’ narrator first meets Li Qi - and then later, during a long phone call from halfway across the world that really captures the magic of telephones at their best. Always on the move, one wonders, “where is this book going? what’s this all about anyway? just to flee?” The narrator arrives in Shanghai and delivers an envelope stuffed with cash as a favor for his girlfriend to a strange fellow with no French and minimal English. He ends up hanging out for a while, involved with a couple of possibly shady characters without really knowing what is going on finds himself train bound for Beijing. Then finds himself, during one of the novel’s longest scenes, hanging out at a bowling alley! The book takes on the feeling of a dream, not unlike a more coherent version of a Steve Erickson style novel. The final third (again not unlike Erickson) takes a completely different turn, as the narrator again finds himself on the move across the globe, first to Paris and then to Elba Island for a funeral (never fun). These final wanderings across Elba take on a more ghostlike, haunted, end of the world tone as he reunites with his girlfriend Marie / or does he? A moving and compelling read. 10:36 PM >>> 0 comments

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The problem with this documentary on the photographer William Eggleston is that one could probably learn more about him by simply reading his Wikipedia entry. The main advantage of seeing the video is getting to watch an older Eggleston at work, wandering around and taking lots of photographs, for the most part sans narrative voice. The movie also shows lots of those photographs, and lots of earlier ones too - and they look great. Unfortunately the actual footage shot for the movie looks for the most part like absolute shit (the three-fourths of the movie that isn't a slide show of photographs), once again displaying the bad side of shooting a project on digital video. However, the main disadvantage of seeing the video is the lengthy passages of drunken / wasted antics - particularly the endless and for the most part incoherent ramblings of one of his girlfriends while he sits on the couch making ridiculous abstract drawings in colored pencil, while listening to R.E.M. A passage that seems to serve no purpose, unless you didn't already know that listening to drunks ramble is boring at best, in fact painfully dull in this case (since I was sober!). Despite these caveats, the film appears to do a spectacular job of catching the artist at work, and while watching an old guy stumble around snapping photographs may not be the most fascinating viewing for some, it does capture the reality of looking at the world with eyes just a little bit different than your average person, and the results show again and again that Eggleston has the eyes of an important, interesting artist. 10:12 AM >>> 0 comments

After seeming to have read a lot of books from a similar perspective recently (usually about 20-somethings and their problems, usually "classics") I really enjoyed the change of scenery provided by François Weyergans Trois Jours Chez Ma Mère, and its considerably more aged (50-something) viewpoint. However, the novel doesn't provide a lot of plot/story. It's, for the most part, more like a long rambling letter from an old friend, free to follow whatever thoughts happen to be running through his head (about his books, music, movies, relationships, children, parents, neighbors, train travel, etc..). These endless digressions remind me a bit of a slightly less-annoying Stephen Dixon, especially during the last third of the book, which presents a new book inside the book, and even a new book inside that section too. This semi-autobiographical approach that makes one question - well, what is autobiography and what isn't, and if it even matters. I did find that last third, which switches from the first-person to the third-person to be somehow less compelling, even though that part of the book may be more intimate. That sudden (pointless?) switch to the third-person had the effect of pushing my interest back a little, holding me back after the first two-thirds of the book worked to draw me in. Luckily a final chapter returns to the original first-person voice, and it's also the most moving section of the book. It's not a difficult read, but it's a weird one - a book where one of the author's main concern is his inability to finish any of the books he is working on, while essentially exploring all these unfinished books over the course of the book. It's rambling and unfocused, but at the same time, pretty entertaining, sometimes funny and sometimes touching. 10:54 AM >>> 0 comments

I really enjoyed reading Murder on the Orient Express. It’s the first Agatha Christie book I’ve read! It seems most people read these books when they were teenagers (or younger) - I don’t know why I never did. Actually, I guess I didn’t really start reading mystery books until I was in my twenties and at that time I guess I wanted to read “harder” stuff, like Jim Thompson or James Ellroy. Christie’s book takes on a serious subject, but in a light-hearted, chess game-like way. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do, but for me it works. It actually reminded me a lot of reading a Tintin album. That same charm, wit and soft touch, even when dealing with something, if you were to really think about it, should probably be considered quite grim. Perhaps it’s the books age, first published in 1934, but another of its delights, is the remarkable un-PC tone throughout the book. Nationality plays a surprising importance in shaping the characters and their (apparent) relationships to each other. For instance, because the book’s main murder is accomplished by stabbing, several characters seem to think the Italian man onboard is the most likely suspect, “because Italians are stabbers.” The English hate the French and vice versa, and of course, everybody hates the Americans. Is it charming because it’s dated, or is it charming because it really hasn’t dated at all? Perhaps because Christie’s approach is more like a fantasy, less concerned with realism than putting all the pieces on the chess board in a way that somehow makes its own kind of sense, the book succeeds in creating its own timeless world. Also, most simply, the characters she has created here are amusing and fun to read about. 11:07 AM >>> 0 comments

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In The Ongoing Moment Geoff Dyer presents his rambling personal thoughts about the photographers and their works that have most interested him. Like always Dyer is extremely readable, enthusiastic and somewhat unfocused - an idiosyncratic approach that helps draw the reader in and keep their interest. He bounces forwards and back through time, stacking up a strange web of connections - occasionally reminding me of the prelude to P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia. He often relates photographs to passages of prose or poems, from authors I would assume are also among his interests. The book is heavily slanted towards American photographers, like Walker Evans, but those are the artists who he seems to have the deepest connection with. He avoids most technical discussion, instead focusing on image selection (the different and similar approaches A, B, C or D took to photographing barbershops, hats, men’s backs, naked women, etc...) and the generally more odd biographical details from certain photographer's lives.

There are lots of photos scattered throughout the book’s pages, but unfortunately they aren’t very well reproduced, due to the book’s poor quality paper and the small size most of the images have been reproduced at. Twelve images are reproduced in color and on slick paper in the books center, and they do look great (even small), but one wishes there were more. At $28.50 USD the production values are a bit of a rip-off. Nonetheless, it’s well worth picking up (especially at a discount) to get an unusual take on what makes photography great and an understanding of what one thoughtful fellow gets out of looking at photographs. I actually found it to be a pretty inspiring read. A read that may make my wallet even more unhappy, as I’ve since added at least ten expensive photography books onto my "to buy" list. 10:04 PM >>> 0 comments

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Crickets is the new, ongoing comic book by Sammy Harkham - the editor of Karmers Ergot - probably the most important and exciting English language anthology being published today - so expectations were high. Unfortunately, the solo-work, Crickets falls short of meeting those high expectations. While hardly a complete failure, it’s a surprisingly derivative comic that wears its influences far too obviously. Harkham’s artwork is somewhat appealing, but his framing reminds one far too much of Chester Brown, especially during the long sequence set around a campfire at night, filled with two static figures drawn small in each panel, facing the reader, in front of a boring, solid black background. Harkham’s use of the same thin line for everything he draws also becomes a bit dull to look at as the pages add up. Worse, this long campfire sequence can’t help recalling to one’s mind a very, very similar sequence in Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film, Dead Man. And once that film gets stuck in your head, one can’t help but seeing many more parallels (borrowings?) throughout Crickets - as both feature a man wounded (or possibly dead), who teams up with a large, nearly silent, mysterious stranger (who may have saved his life) - and while wandering through the woods, they come upon three strangers around a campfire (in this case one of the people at the campfire is already dead), and end up getting in a fight that leads to the death of the ones who were eating around the fire - and one of those people who were already there even accidentally shoots the other. Of course, there’s been a long history of comics “borrowing” from cinema (and vice versa), but in this case, once can’t help thinking of the much greater depth of the work seeming to be mirrored. The fact that this is also only the first part of a long serialized work makes it hard to judge completely. Future issues promise to continue the work and feature other shorter works as well. Harkham is definitely a talent whose potential is obvious, but there is some growth needed (can he truly find his own voice? does he have anything interesting to say?), before one could take him as seriously as an artist as an editor. 1:16 PM >>> 0 comments

Despite my supposed wishes, I can’t seem to stop reading books about rich people and their fucked up lives. However, Elizabeth Bowen’s The House in Paris, from 1935, is actually a pretty good one. 1. Interesting characters. 2. Interesting structure. 3. Fine prose style.

The first third of the book is set in the present (1935) as two unrelated children make their way to a house in Paris for two different reasons. The middle section of the book moves back in time, ten or so years, to tell the story of the conception of one of those children. The final third puts all the pieces together and moves towards the unknown future.

The plot unfolds like a mystery - slowly we learn more about everything - character’s relationships to each other, and the past’s relationship to the present - yet some feelings remain ambiguous. It’s that vaguely poetic undertone that kept me eating up pages. But it was also that slightly too literary, slightly too poofy(?) quality that kept me from falling completely for the book. I’m afraid it’s just another friendship when I was really hoping for a love affair. 6:28 PM >>> 0 comments

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Glenway Wescott’s short novel from 1940, The Pilgrim Hawk, is a great example of magnificently polished prose. But while almost every word is perfect, somehow the story and characters themselves aren’t as compelling as they should be. As the pages passed by I found myself thinking, “okay - nothing much interesting is going on here, so the book must be building towards a twist climax - some kind of shock or explosion,” and sure enough I was right. But that twist ending also is somehow less than compelling, possibly because the characters are a little too vaguely realized over the course of the short book for us to care sufficiently about them. In a way, The Pilgrim Hawk, is a minor key (less ambitious) take on a sort of Great Gatsby-type theme. Set over the course of an afternoon, a rich woman and her friend (the writer) are visited by another rich woman and her husband. The visitor is obsessed with her trained hawk, which she carries on her gloved arm, and most of the story runs through her relationship with her bird. I also found myself thinking, “perhaps I’ve recently read a few too many stories about bored rich people and their fucked up relationships.” The perfection of the prose certainly is worth the price of admission, but I just wish the book had a little more meat - a little more, something one could sink their teeth into, that could have pushed the story up to that transcendent level. 7:01 PM >>> 0 comments

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While in the end I found D. H. Lawrence’s Woman in Love to come to a satisfying conclusion, there were too many confusing and overwrought passages throughout the book, particular when the plot is lost for pages of practically incoherent philosophical musings, for me to consider it completely satisfying read. It was certainly a much darker book than I expected, especially with a title like that. In fact, the book is hardly about women in love, but more about two women (sisters) and two men (enemies? friends? lovers?) struggling to figure out how to live and love (or not) on their own terms, instead of following the pre-established codes of their society. At times, Lawrence is quite compelling, but too often the book falls into a feverish ridiculousness. For instance the lengthy scene where the two men decide to wrestle each other, naked(!?), but are they wrestling or fucking, “So the two men entwined and wrestled with each other, working nearer and nearer. Both were white and clear, but Gerald flushed smart red where he was touched, and Birkin remained white and tense. He seemed to penetrate into Gerald’s more solid, more diffuse bulk, to interfuse his body through the body of the other, as if to bring it subtly into subjection, always seizing with some necromantic foreknowledge every motion of the other flesh, converting and counteracting it, playing upon the limbs and trunk like some hard wind. It was as if Birkin’s whole physical intelligence interpenetrated into Gerald’s body, as if his fine, sublimated energy entered into the flesh of the fuller man[...],” etc. Kind of absurd, really (necromantic foreknowledge! what the fuck!). Or perhaps even worse, when Ursula and Birkin finally seem to hook up and “she was tracing the back of his thighs, following some mysterious life flow there. She had discovered something, something more than wonderful, more wonderful than life itself. It was the strange mystery of his life motion, there, at the back of his thighs, down his flanks. It was the strange reality of his being, the very stuff of his being, there in the straight downflow of the thighs.” Uh yeah, the back of the thighs? These occasionally feverish, semi-nonsensical passages read like the scribbles of a very drunk man, and a very confused one. At other times though, the prose is very fine and readable, and the overall arc of the plot is for the most part compelling. The less ambitious sections however are always the sections that work best. The book’s overly grand ambitions are somehow embarrassing, or worse, simply completely wrong. 10:59 AM >>> 0 comments