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Summer Reading
by ELEANOR MORROW
Alex and Andrew have been occupying the male side of the SFF spectrum, but what about the work of Ursula K. LeGuin? Know perhaps better for her classic bildungsroman The Wizard of Earthsea (Harry Potter when there was no such thing), this magnificent novel combines the worlds of fantasy and science fiction, and won a Hugo and Nebula in the year the Apollo 11 mission reached the moon. It is an endlessly deep tale, which would make a magnificent film. I won't spoil the particulars, but LeGuin is a hard genius.
I was never much for physics; my instructor was a Russian immigrant and frankly I barely understood a word she said from the moment I met her to when I dropped out of her class with my C- average. Nevermind that, because Ilya Prigogine's masterpiece brings to bear all the things we can't understand. Some days I can't believe it myself that I'm walking on a planet, in a solar system, in the universe, in space.
Is Play It As It Lays a great novel? Probably depends on where you're standing. To a repressed New Englander, it was basically Fear of Flying in a literary package. The narrative concerns itself with an unhappy actress recovering from a nervous breakdown. No one writes seriously about these sorts of people, or even unseriously, but that's what makes Joan fun. She's essentially unserious even when she's at her most didactic. I still think this book is a lot of fun, although I sure wouldn't recommend the movie.
A beautiful, spare, short book about growing up. Read it on the way to somewhere. You will be more surprised by your arrival than you can imagine. Jaggy followed up this masterpiece with a father-daughter melodrama, S.S. Proleterka, but it's really Sweet Days of Discipline that is her masterpiece.
My favorite poet: instead of being blunt, she is delicate, praying over what normally doesn't get prayed over. A biting sense of humor, and a New York setting. Her Collected is probably more readily available, but The Kingfisher preserves her eye for the natural in any environment. The woman even wrote good poetry about trash.
Perhaps the most forgotten genius of 20th century literature, McCarthy reaped accolades with her debut, The Company You Keep, a hilarious expose of the intellectual circles of the 1930s. Not exactly timeless, as her memoirs prove. She got around quite a bit, and had a lot of fun. Who knew that the 1930s were wild for some? I didn't. The polar opposite of her Minnesota mirror-universe writer Midge Decter's disturbingly weird autobiography, An Old Wife's Tale.
Some folks write that masterful first novel and quit trying. Amis never did, and probably bettered his heartsick debut. It was turned into a strange but funny film starring Ione Skye. Not much has been written perceptively about the experience and consequences of sex, let alone for teenagers, but this and Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus are short little masterpieces that their authors should probably have returned to more often than they did.
Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She lives in Manhattan, and tumbls here.
After a faith healer 'cured' his chronic fatigue syndrome, Stuart Murdoch formed Belle & Sebastian in 1996. He worked as a caretaker until 2003. In between he out-indied himself and made several great records.
Along with compatriot Stuart David recorded some demos with Stow College music professor Pilar Duplack, which were picked up by the college's Music Business course that produces and releases one single each year on the college's label, Electric Honey. As the band had a number of songs already and the label were extremely impressed with the demos, Belle & Sebastian were allowed to record a full-length album, which was named Tigermilk. Murdoch once described the band as a "product of botched capitalism."
Although a lot of people think he's gay because of his lyrics, Murdoch is straight.
My friend Anna loved Belle & Sebastian, and when I expressed my skepticism (I was 15 years old and extremely self-involved) she refused to speak to me until I listened to them. Afterwards, we found great satisfaction in growing weary of the world together and singing in a comforting falsetto.
In my high school, driving around a lot and acting depressed was the main source of entertainment. Occasionally a keg would be present, more often one would be mentioned but never actually appear.
"Ease Your Feet In The Sea" - Belle & Sebastian (mp3)
"Sukie In The Graveyard" - Belle & Sebastian (mp3)
"The Blues Are Still Blue" - Belle & Sebastian (mp3)
We didn't know, we couldn't know, that our laissez-faire existence would be shattered by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the entire questionable 2002-present period. Our shattered illusions had yet smaller pieces to separate into. Eventually they became electrons, and caused an economic collapse. I should testify before Congress.
I still remember seeing a joint for the first time. It was 1996. I cut my foot on a rock I was so high. We listened to "The State I Am In" over 7,000 times in a row, then went to get breakfast.
When we first got our hands on If You're Feeling Sinister we drove around in Anna's Volvo (she was a year older than I was, and much prettier) and screamed at people like it was the new AC/DC. Soon enough we had memorized the lyrics to "Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying" and during the following school year we used lines from the songs as cagey rejoinders to boys. At least Anna did — she was coming into her prime. I still found it hilarious when she answered anything I asked by singing, "It may as well be me!"
"For the Price of A Cup of Tea" - Belle & Sebastian (mp3)
"To Be Myself Completely" - Belle & Sebastian (mp3)
Murdoch came in and wrote more music for Todd Solondz' Storytelling after the film had already been cut. They didn't really get along with Todd.
When we first saw it, it was a rambling two-and-a-half hour thing in two parts and we couldn't really understand where the two parts came together. I don't think the director could either, but we still liked the film a lot. Over time, about an hour of the film was cut. We knew as we were working how much of our music he would use.
"Dirty Dream Number Two" - Belle and Sebastian (mp3)
"Is It Wicked Not To Care?" - Belle and Sebastian (mp3)
Stuart and Co. kept running against the capitalist mix-up. I'd moved onto college, and Anna was working as a waitress in a local coffee shop. I hated school, Anna hated her life. This, I suppose, was the natural progression of things, but we did not know at the time that the glories of the late 90s had passed through our fingertips and we weren't even in a position to appreciate it!
The main protagonist is Eve, the girl who sings most of the songs on the record. She starts off in a mental hospital, at her lowest ebb. She’s not too crazy but she’s crazy enough. She’s in there for a long time and she discovers that she can write songs and she sees that as her way of getting out of the trouble she’s in. She makes it out of hospital eventually and runs into James and Cassie and the three of them make music over the course of a summer and become really close.
I'm sure I'll be running out to see that one. But whatever, someone has to write nostalgia. I guess the 1990s are now the 1970s. It depends on where you're staring at them from, and how hard you're looking. There's no wave rolling back, as Hunter S. Thompson put it, there's just a wave rolling over everything and everyone.
Stuart Murdoch talking with Terry Gross on NPR (mp3)
"It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career" - Belle and Sebastian (mp3)
Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She lives in New York City, and she tumbls here for your pleasure.
Perhaps my favourite LP. It's short, six tracks. The two standout songs are seven and eight minutes long respectively. I don't even particularly love the short tracks. It feels like they're just little tugboats for the long songs. But then the two long songs are perhaps the most seductive and satisfying music I've ever heard.
2. COCTEAU TWINS: Victorialand
More seduction, the Cocteaus have gone up and up in my estimation since the time I actually listened to music. So much else has fallen behind. I like this LP so much that Victorialand has become one of my favourite words. Listening to this LP I waved goodbye to school, to work, to every day ambitions.
Poetic, ambitious, amazing. Lawrence rightly points out that the production on this LP is terrific. I think it was Mayo Thomson. It's hard to imagine this record ever having been released. Hard to imagine it was ever new. I'd like to propose that it was an indie fossil, and that some Bowlie kid just dug it up. Hence it became an instant and unquenchable classic.
4. ORANGE JUICE: You Can't Hide Your Love Forever
Still the only fun in town. In my time they were the four young lads you wanted to be. Floppy, spoilt babies with all the best looking girls around. They posed like aristocracy. They were aristocracy! They had the records to back it up; this spectacular first LP for instance. I wasn't around to see it come out. I pulled my copy out of a bargain bin for a quid. It was signed by Edwyn! In my mind their myth grew and grew!
A friend of mine gave me London Calling for Christmas this year. He gave it to everyone! He was standing on Byres Road handing out copies like religious pamphlets! My old copy was at my mum's, so I was glad to stick it on again. It's more Springsteen than punk, and that's what gets me. The flashing pianos, the barrage of words. A terrific band performance.
"Shoplifters of the World Unite (last ever live performance)" - The Smiths (mp3)
"Sheila Take A Bow (last ever live performance)" - The Smiths (mp3)
"Sweet and Tender Hooligan (John Peel session)" - The Smiths (mp3)
7. THE SPECIALS: The Specials
It's funny, I remember the aforementioned Orange Juice slagging off The Specials and the whole mod revival. "It's like a cross between King Tubby and Dick Emery! Why not get a King Tubby record and a Dick Emery record and play it at the same time!" they said. They were wrong.
After Victorialand made me drop out, I drifted into second hand record storedom. When people brought their old records in to sell, I used to stick the ones I liked the look of behind the cistern in the toilet. These were three I liked the look of, and I wasn't wrong. All on Rough Trade. I don't mean to be a sook, but you've got to hand it to my boss, Geoff Travis!
Garry Shandling would have been the perfect host of late night talk show, but instead he gave us The Larry Sanders Show, 89 brilliant episodes about being backstage at one. It was the first multi-camera sitcom that took advantage of the form, and probably the best ever done. They could run it on HBO today, promote it like a new show, and it would feel like one except for the noticeable lack of cell phones.
Garry Shandling has a puffy, round face like a blowfish, and a gee whiz surface personality. You don't expect a blowfish to have charisma, but Larry had it, and a Jewish sex appeal, and a likeability that would have made him the perfect person to come home to every night. Fortunately, he was a better sitcom star.
Unlike Larry David and Woody Allen, Sanders doesn't hate himself. He loves himself more than anything, except for perhaps his show. Bill Carter's classic recounting of the war over The Tonight Show proved how lonely and depraved such people were to try and do comedy day after day. You can't do comedy in this fashion, to offer something fresh and new is impossible.
This format is the epitome of The Show Must Go On. Larry is a trooper. He may not do his show live, but he does it live on tape.
Airing on HBO from 1992-1998, Larry took the backstage showbiz cliche and perfected it until it was startlingly original. No show had ever had such a perfect ensemble cast, but Larry was the bulbous center. He was the name on the show, the man who has to go out there every night and brave the elements.
What we learned along the way was that he had to survive a constant barrage of backstage elements, too: producers jostling over how to handle him, office assistants who need to be appreciated and loved, network suits that wanted to replace him with someone younger and less Jewish, writers who needed his approval and their jokes on the air. Oh to be Larry!
Above all, there was the sex. Near his happy home (it once belonged to Johnny) Shandling has a strange sex life. The sexual politics of The Larry Sanders Show were those of the early 1990s, when this weird Victorianism that was floating back into American culture began to take root. For now, the guests of The Larry Sanders Show loved to have sex with anyone and everyone, but they didn't feel that great about it afterwards.
Between these encounters, the behind-the-scenes was generally fraught with envy and hatred. The Larry Sanders Show is supposed to be a satire, but it was also just as good doing real life.
In one episode, Larry got Ellen DeGeneres on the show, slept with her before the interview, tried to get her to admit her character on Ellen was gay on the air, and got ambushed by Ellen on the show for his trouble, and yelled at by his lesbian fuck-buddy afterwards. It simply doesn't pay to try to draw ratings.
Underneath his persona, Larry loved being in the business, but he didn't like being in the business. He was more comfortable with his ego being the biggest in the room.
Larry was constantly buttressed by two polar opposite figures. The first is his producer Artie, played by Rip Torn in the finest comic performance since Basil Fawlty.
This was the role of Torn's life, and you can see the cheeky fun he has playing someone who will do anything for the show, and anything for Larry, even though he may not completely like it. As a result, Artie spent most of his days lying to his friend, and keeping other people off Larry's back.
Jeffrey Tambor immortalized the role of Larry's sidekick Hank Kingsley, doing Leaving Las Vegas but as a comedy bit and stringing it over six marvelous seasons. Hank is the saddest loser in the history of American television, and Tambor gave himself over to the role of bald-headed insecure prick. These three elements would have been enough for a fantastic sitcom, but the rest of the cast was just as good.
Janeane Garofalo played the crass booker Paula before giving way to Mary Lynn Rajskub's more understated performance. Garofalo never found a better role. Wallace Langham and Jeremy Piven were Larry's writers, before Larry fired Piven for banging Hayden Panettiere. Sarah Silverman also made several amazing appearances as a writer on the show.
Penny Johnson was Larry's assistant, a strong black woman in a time when network television tended to avoid them, and Linda Doucett (later Shandling's girlfriend) was Hank's bosomy, hilarious assistant. Bob Odenkirk was Larry's agent, among many young comedians who burst onto the national stage with a small part in play in Larry's sad little life.
Larry's wives were also fascinating. I preferred Larry's more dickish first wife, Francine, but his second wife Jeannie had her moments too.
Utterly obsessed with himself, Larry has a hard time dealing with a woman as an equal since he is the only man and the only woman in his life.
Underneath that surly veneer was a comedian who just wanted to be liked. The Larry Sanders Show was funny people before Funny People; shit, Judd Apatow did his best writing for this HBO gem. Every comedian has something inside them that needs more approval, now, faster. When you have to watch yourself every single night, it's a bear. Larry does it though; otherwise, he can't appreciate what other people see in him.
Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls right here for your pleasure.
You can download the first season of The Larry Sanders Showhere.
BOOKS 
