William S. Burroughs

Burroughs and his "cut-up" style in Naked Lunch are fascinating. Although I am speechless when confronted with a work like Naked Lunch, I plan to read more of his novels, which bring to mind the better postmodern fiction from some of my favorite writers. Moreover, Burroughs always has something interesting to say about narcotics and his interest in anthropology and ideas of science fiction are clever, horrifying, and intriguing. At times, Naked Lunch reminded me of Lovecraft because of the author's cleverly constructed universe that blends fact and fiction with occult allusions. 

The Word For World Is Forest

The novella is a neglected literary form, and Le Guin's The Word for World Is Forest, published in a collection of SF edited by Harlan Ellison, definitely reflects the 1970s and the Vietnam War, as well as Le Guin's other passions, environmentalism and racial/gender politics. While reading it, the obvious comparisons came to mind, with the Ewoks of Star Wars to Avatar, but Philip K. Dick's 1964 novel, Martian Time-Slip, seems like an even better comparison to make. Both writers knew each other and followed each other's work, and much like Dick's earlier novel, a humanoid alien race on another planet must confront colonialism. Of course, Dick's Martian setting more closely resembles the American western than the forest world of Le Guin's novella, but both writers reflect on colonialism, slavery, racism, gender, genocide, and the turbulent decades of US war and intervention in Southeast Asia. 

Unfortunately, where Le Guin lost me is in her extremely didactic moralism (overt references to Vietnam, guerrilla warfare, and massacres of that period abound in the text, with a final message boiling down to violence begets violence?), whereas Dick is a tad more ambiguous and ontologically unstable (although, the question of insanity and the different frames of reference for Terran humans and the native humans of Le Guin's planet regarding dreams indicates some parallels). Another Dick novel of comparable thematic content is Dr. Futurity, especially in postulating a future in which humanity is "mixed race" and Native American (indigenous) spirituality and social organizations are prominent. Sadly, Dick's fiction, from what I've read, did not continue to experiment with these notions of race and gender in the creative ways of Le Guin, hence her stature in science fiction.  

Due to her her father's background in anthropology, the chapters told from the perspective of Selver, the 'god' who leads his race against the Terran settlers, are the most interesting for bringing, in her own way, cosmology and epistemology of indigenous societies to the forefront is fascinating, albeit less engaging than the the larger universe of her Hainish Cycle stories. One finds oneself more interested in the other humanoid aliens, ansible, and League of Worlds, and an extended form of prose writing to bring the world into Le Guin's unique vision. Perhaps if approached as an introduction to the larger world of her Hainish Cycle, some of its flaws can be forgiven. 

Keith Jarrett's Common Mama

Due to the recommendations of family who enjoy Keith Jarrett's music, I have been exploring his catalog. "Common Mama" is the kind of the jazz fusion I enjoy: funky, accessible, largely avoiding the noodling one finds in so much 1970s fusion records, and exploring polyrhythm in an interesting vein. Dewey Redman does not hold back here in his brief solo, which bows to the demands of funk and popular music while paying homage to the avant garde stylings of Albert Ayler and others. But the samba-like percussion is what drives this piece. Indeed, one is reminded of Bud Powell's "Un Poco Loco" because of Jarrett's use of Latin rhythms without sacrificing the jazz side of the equation.  

The Power and the Glory

Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory is one of those rare novels with such spiritual import one is left breathless after finishing. Reminding me of Philip K. Dick's masterpiece, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Greene's thoroughly Catholic tale of a Mexican priest on the run is essentially Christian, just like Dick's late work. Both also share a devotion to agape as the reservoir (and goal?) of Christian meaning and faith, done to excellent effect in both works. Just as one character chooses compassion over enlightenment in Dick's novel, here the unnamed Mexican priest, returns to certain death to fulfill his duty and try to love everyone as he loves his grave sin. Greene's novel also brings to mind the problematic ways in which leftist insurgents and governments, pursuing the same goals, in the end, as the Catholic Church, can also harm or exploit the population in which they claim to be fighting for. No one is left unscathed in this touching tale, and much like the life of the saints or Christ himself, there is always redemption or redeemable aspects of the unfavorable characters, including the lieutenant hell-bent on killing the unnamed priest, the last Catholic cleric left in a state whose socialist government banned Catholicism.  Furthermore, the ambiguous loose ends of the novel, which another novelist may not have succeeded in pulling off, contribute to the text's core themes of the community, aided by the novel's shift in characters, as the decisions made by a few reverberate throughout the province as the "whiskey priest" lives on the run. In short, a brilliant novel that Catholics and non-Catholics alike can enjoy, be mesmerized by, and appreciate the Mexican setting. 

Jeff VanderMeer

Brief interview with Jeff VanderMeer, author of Veniss City. In my high school science fiction literature class, VanderMeer's novel was the most memorable reading assignment (although Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan is a better novel overall). After several years and expanding my knowledge of science fiction literature and film, I have a much better idea of what is going on in Veniss City, especially some of the less well-known literary allusions and homages in the dark tale that, to the writer's credit, tries something different and experimental while standing on the shoulders of giants (Bosch, Goya, Lovecraft, Dick, Dante, etc.). Gibson's classic novel is next on the reading list. 

Dwójka Rzymska

A funky number from one of the greats of Polish jazz, and film score composer for Roman Polanski. An extended live recording at Copenhagen can be accessed here. Krzysztof Komeda has a distinctive sound that I cannot quite trace, but someone who clearly followed the avant-garde of 1960s American jazz. This sure ain't your grandmother's polka or mazurka, that's for sure. 

Our Second Father

Stunning drumming in this tribute to Coltrane, recorded live at Slugs' Saloon, a legendary club in New York (Sun Ra had a famous stint there, documented in John Szwed's excellent biography of Ra). Jimmy Hopps on drums sounds a little like Elvin Jones, but with a little of Rashied or Muhammad Ali, and it's all fantastic. Stanley Cowell, on the other hand, really does sound like McCoy Tyner, but that's okay. 

Repetition

Polish jazz legend Krzysztof Komeda playing "Repetition" live. The head of this song actually sounds quite a bit like "One Note Rara" by Buyu Ambroise, itself a nod to "One Note Samba."

A Deusa Dos Orixás

Iansã, cadê Ogum? Foi pro mar!"

Baby Legba?

Celina y Reutilio are just two of my favorite Cuban artists. "El Hijo de Eleggua" can be repeated ad nauseum.  

Radebe

South African jazz legends Johnny Dyani and Dudu Pukwana are on fire. Brazilian groove and rhythm meets Dudu Pukwana's joyful township sounds while Danish John Tchicai does his Albert Ayler-like blowing that does not clash at all with Pukwana. Dyani's bass is the pulse.

Jazz brings the world together.

Haiti B

Joanne Brackeen takes us to Haiti in her modal piece, "Haiti B." Although there is nothing distinctly Haitian leaping at the listener, there is something "Eastern" in this composition, as well as some provocative bass playing from Clint Houston. I have never heard of Joanne Brackeen before, but apparently she was the first woman jazz artist in Art Blakey's Messengers, and "Haiti B" was interesting enough to appeal to the taste of Pharaoh Sanders. Perhaps the title is a nod to Charles Mingus and his bass-driven "Haitian Fight Song," but without the blues emphasis?

Brasil

Over one month later, I am still missing Gato Barbieri and his unique approach to Latin jazz. Gato is, for me at least, a Pharaoh Sanders of Latin America. Oh, and here's video footage of Barbieri performing "Brasil" at Montreux in 1971. Naná Vasconcelos is enjoying the berimbau.

Pressure

Worth watching just for its portrait of 1970s Black Britain and the screenplay co-written by Sam Selvon, Pressure sort of a sequel in spirit to The Lonely Londoners. Instead of the immigrant experience of Tony's parents (who would be the equivalent of the characters in Selvon's famous novel), the film tells the story of the generation of West Indians born in Britain, as they struggle with identity, Black Power, racial discrimination in all sectors of life, and the generation struggle and divide between them and their parents. As one would expect with Selvon, there are some humorous moments and allusions to interracial sex between black men and white women, a theme in some of Selvon's novels. 

Our Man in Havana

Graham Greene's hilarious Our Man in Havana is both more humorous and entertaining read than The Comedians, but doesn't exploit the Cuban setting as effectively Port-au-Prince in the other famous novel. Maybe it reflects my own greater familiarity with Port-au-Prince than Havana, a city I have never visited, but Havana does not come to life as easily here as Port-au-Prince and Duvalierville in Comedians. Sure, the famous nightclubs, the Paseo, and Havana's whorehouses and gambling dens (and the many pimps, bootblacks, and crooked cops) are key to the story, with the Batista regime tumbling, yet something was amiss here. That said, Greene's novel manages to fuse comedy with prescient visions of the importance of Cuba in the Cold War and the imminent Cuban Revolution, and all through a tale of sheer absurdity poking fun at the British Secret Service! Anyone who romanticizes pre-Castro Cuba should read this entertaining novel just for an idea of the volatile period of Batista or the institutionalization of Havana's existence as entertainment for tourists. Oh, and Captain Segura ain't got nothing on the macoutes of Duvalierist Haiti. 

The Best of Mingus (Exercise in Futility)

Although it's always fraught with danger and bias to construct a "best of" list for any musician or artist, here are my top 50 compositions by/performed by Mingus. The list could be trimmed down to 40 or 45, especially since Mingus recycled some of his tunes multiple times. "Haitian Fight Song" is one well-known example of this habit. 

1. Haitian Fight Song

2. Ysabel's Table Dance

3. Summertime

4. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting

5. Jive Ass Slippers

6. Pithecanthropus Erectus

7. Love Chant

8. Los Mariachis

9. So Long, Eric

10. Fables of Faubus

11. Celia

12. Hobo Ho

13. A Foggy Day

14. Reincarnation of a Lovebird

15. Better Git It In Your Soul

16. Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

17. Things Ain't What They Used To Be

18. Slop

19. Diane

20. Nostalgia in Times Square

21. Moanin'

22. All the Things You Could Be by Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother

23. Folk Forms, No. 1

24. Lock 'Em Up

25. Hog Callin' Blues

26. Oh Lord Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me

27. Passion of a Man

28. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (Entire Album)

29. Freedom

30. "II B.S.

31. Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blue

32. The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jiveass Slippers

33. Devil Blues

34. Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi U.S.A.

35. Cumbia and Jazz Fusion

36. Meditations on Integration

37. No Private Income Blues

38. Work Song

39. Prayer for Passive Resistance

40. Epitaph

41. Fleurette Africaine

42. Work Song

43. Chill of Death

44. Septemberly

45. Eat That Chicken

46. Adagio ma Non Troppo

47. Self-Portrait in Three Colors

48. Don't Be Afraid the Clown's Afraid Too

49. The I Of Hurricane Sue

50. Peggy's Blue Skylight

We Can Build You

Philip K. Dick's We Can Build You is a novel of the kind only he could ever write: Simulacrum of Lincoln, schizophrenic love interest for the confused Jewish narrator, disdain for the corporate giants preying on the small businessman, and drug-fueled hallucinations. The schizophrenic child in Martian Time-Slip is more interesting than Pris, but one suspects that Ridley Scott's Blade Runner took some ideas from Pris in this novel when adapting Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to the big screen. Anyway, much like Dick's other novels, familiar themes of metaphysics, mental illness, and the struggle to define what it means to be human (with the accompanying ethical dilemmas that question raises) are tackled here, with some additional humor from the simulacra of Abraham Lincoln and Edwin M. Stanton. There is talk of imminent colonization of the Moon and other planets, massive rates of mental illness in the general population, and defective people like the narrator's brother, Chester, born with an upside down face (caused by radiation). Unfortunately, the schizophrenic are not gifted with the power of precognitive powers, like Dick's other novels, but like Martian, it questions how society treats and defines mental illness, much like the simulacrum's humanity surfacing in ways not seen in the schizophrenic Pris.

As a rambling side note, sometimes while reading this, one gets the impression Dick's interest in psychology, lady problems, and perhaps some attempt at understanding his own anxieties or potential mental health status were clearly part of Louis Rosen's attempts at making sense of his world. Furthermore, the danger of Barrows and his corporate empire lends some credence to the view of Dick as a quasi-Marxist. Unfortunately, Dick does not expound upon his views on US public education like Martian Time-Slip, but the veiled criticism of the state's abuse of power to incarcerate those it designates as psychotic through two measly tests is just as potent and ludicrous as the propaganda machine schools for children on the Martian settlement of that other great novel. 

Camp Concentration

Well, Camp Concentration is a tour de force. Proving SF writers can be just as literary and intellectual as "serious" fiction, Disch's dark novel is hilarious, depressing, intelligent, and germane to the 1960s (recent memory of the Holocaust, Vietnam War, Civil Rights Movement). Furthermore, the twists were, at least for me, not obvious and nicely combined science fiction ideas with an intriguing captive narrator. This is only the second Disch book I have read, and the style of Louis Sachetti, the narrator, is remarkably similar to Disch's nonfiction writing in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World, especially the ironic and condescending humor of Disch or even how he discusses science fiction, race, feminism, and spirituality in the works of fellow SF writers like Philip K. Dick. Needless to say, Camp Concentration explores all of these aforementioned ideas in a humorous, literary way, replete with numerous quotations and homages to the classics in Western poetry, art music, and philosophy. Anyone interested in challenging but rewarding SF literature should read Camp Concentration, and I am sure you will not predict the ending. 

The Middle Passage

After over a year since I first tried to finish Naipaul's The Middle Passage, I can confidently say this is my favorite of his travel writing. Much of the humor and social commentary in his description of the various Caribbean societies he visits is part of his satirical short stories and novels, for example. The "racial distribution" of jobs in Trinidad, for instance, is brilliantly satirized in his story about the black Grenadian baker pretending to be Chinese to have customers. Similarly, the dark themes about the Caribbean (slave past, centuries of oppression and violence) and the tragedy of the African in the New World (to be recast in so many images of the European powers). Indeed, much of Naipaul's ruminations on race and colonialism are better explored in some of his novels, particularly The Mimic Men, but it's intriguing to see where he was headed in his nonfiction writing before his later literary endeavors. Anyway, to give credit where it's due, Naipaul does understand the problem of race and the phenomenon of black skins in white masks for the West Indies, and there is less of the rampant Negrophobia than I remembered from a year ago. That said, I prefer his younger brother's travel writings on the West Indies over his, though both share a like-minded view on the matter. 

The "meat" of Naipaul's writing here, despite covering Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname, Martinique, Antigua, and Jamaica, is really the actual voyage (the titular middle passage) from Europe (coincidentally, picking up emigrants for Britain along the way, completing the cycle of uprooting), his time in Trinidad, and lengthy descriptions of Guyana, the Jagans, and its particular racial and political problems. His sojourn in Suriname is actually a tad less nuanced than that of Shiva Naipaul, and lacks Shiva's nuance in his descriptions of the "Bush Negroes," too.  On describing his native Trinidad, naturally, Naipaul is on top form, hinting at several of the ideas percolating in his mind for Mimic Men and future nonfiction on Trinidad. Unfortunately, Naipaul does not visit any Spanish-speaking Caribbean destinations, unlike Shiva Naipaul, who visited Puerto Rico, so it is far from a 'complete' portrait of the Caribbean during a moment of great change. But anyone interested in the British West Indies during this pivotal moment on the path to independence should read this. 

Requiem (For Charlie Parker)

Lennie Tristano is one of the more interesting jazz figures I know little about. Despite listening to some of his early explorations in 'free jazz' and noting his influence on other jazz titans I adore, mainly Mingus, I am still largely unfamiliar with his corpus of work. Nonetheless, I like what I have heard so far. Songs like "Requiem" illustrate a creative side, mainly in the 'fusion' of classical and blues influences for a song honoring Charlie Parker. By writing such a spiritually-charged blues, "Requiem" brings to mind Alice Coltrane's "Turiya and Ramakrishna," although she does not adopt any classical-styled introduction to her composition. 

Viva Emiliano Zapata

Some Gato for a breezy Sunday afternoon.