The Big Time (1958)

Fritz Leiber has a big reputation in horror and science fiction circles, but I haven’t read enough yet perhaps to be impressed myself. This very short mess of a novel (about 100 pages, a length sometimes considered a novella) won a Hugo (for “Best Novel or Novelette”). Wikipedia says it a nice way: “The Big Time is a story involving only a few characters, but with a vast, cosmic backstory.” That backstory is basically time travel, which can change history and erase people (who can then be “resurrected” somehow). It’s an interesting concept but explanatory exposition is scant here. These characters are similarly in a place, called “a Place,” which requires explanation. But, again, in medias res, baby. Catch the clues and keep up. It started to feel make-believe in childish ways. The Place, by the way, has affinities with Samuel Beckett’s let’s call it universe. It’s possible that reading The Big Time again, knowing what I learned the first time, might open it up more impressively for me. People see something in it. It won a Hugo and is included in a Library of America anthology of science fiction novels. There are some gems among the nine novels gathered there—notably Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination and Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man—but more often they felt slight to me and poorly done. The Big Time could maybe have been bigger and more descriptive, which I hate to say in this era of bloat—big novels part of big series. It was kind of refreshing to see a novel coming in at 100 pages. But it is dense and work to fathom. For about the first 20 pages I could barely make out what was even happening. There’s something that stinks a little of the MENSA mentality going on here, the arrogance and contempt. I’ve seen it in science fiction before. Maybe it’s a tradition. I’m thinking here of Philip Jose Farmer, to name names. And maybe Fritz Leiber too. All I can say about what I’ve read of Leiber is that it usually leaves me cold, but I’m thinking I should give it or him another try. All that love. There has to be something to it. But tastes in genre can often be stubbornly individual, I guess. Ramsey Campbell is another even more extreme example of my lack of understanding.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

The Wall (1979)

The other day I saw a social media post asking about albums worth listening to in their entirety, from beginning to end. I was surprised to find this double-LP behemoth among the most frequently mentioned, not least because I had spent the summer playing it that way and found myself crawling up the walls, so to speak. “Dreary blob of audio,” I noted one day. The other odd factor for me was that I never had listened to it that way in the first place—I never owned it (nor Tusk by Fleetwood Mac, for that matter, the other big burger from that autumn). I liked “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Comfortably Numb” enough that I did not turn them away when they came up on the radio. In retrospect this is where the Roger Waters takeover was complete. Pink Floyd had looked to me like a bloat job anyway since at least Dark Side of the Moon, though I’ve since found some (not a lot of) interest in Wish You Were Here and Animals. Waters wrote every bit of the music on The Wall and also scripted the freaking 1982 movie directed by Alan Parker (Midnight Express, The Commitments). I saw it when it was new and it left me, er, uncomfortably numb from the assault of bleak paranoia. The grit felt ground into grime. The album is just a lot of weak sauce. I wonder if anyone mentioned to Waters that “Goodbye Blue Sky” scans way too close to “Goodbye Ruby Tuesday” in the clinch of the chorus. But the song also has some effective moments of tension, so all right. “Vera” harks to Vera Lynn, the iconic World War II UK singer who hit with “White Cliffs of Dover” and especially “We’ll Meet Again,” for a weird-toned moment of genuine nostalgia (I think) in this mess. “The Trial” strains for the Kurt Weill note. And I don’t know about you, let alone Waters, but I do not find children singing “We don’t need no education” to be at all a comforting sentiment. The only saving grace about this puffed-up operatic strudel may be that the libretto is essentially incoherent (except the occasional lines and dramatic readings about public school failings). You have to study The Wall, including a look at the movie, to get the heavy bring-down vibe. My recommendation is don’t study it. In fact, I think you can skip it altogether—I know, 50 years too late again. The one bright spot musically is David Gilmour who steps in, seemingly only when Waters allows it, and chips in some very enjoyable guitar solos and the best music here.

Jeff Buckley, “Forget Her” (1993)

[listen up!]

Word is that Jeff Buckley specifically wanted this song left off of what turned out to be his only album, the 1994 Grace. “Forget Her” is a bittersweet breakup song, plurality of emphasis on the bitter, and Buckley wanted to stay friends with his former and presumably worried she would not react well to it. But I’m glad it finally made it out. It’s too good not to release. Anyone who’s had a broken heart (viz., everyone) is likely to feel this down deep. “Don’t fool yourself / She was heartache from the moment that you met her,” he wails. The dramatic scene is that he’s walking the streets, walkin’ after midnight so to speak, to stop his weeping. It’s the terrible moments at the first of the break, when eating and sleeping is self-denied and a kind of catatonic state descends. No appetite, no stopping the brain. On the Kubler-Ross scale of grief, the singer is flitting between anger and bargaining. Indeed, a case can be made that choosing to leave the song off the album was itself a bargaining ploy. None of that is my business or has much to do with why and how this song goes right through me. I have my own history, of course, and this song opens up some of my own darkest, saddest days. It’s cathartic, in a way—certainly I’ve had my daily infatuations with it. It has often stolen up on me unexpectedly one way or another. More than that, at this point, it’s a reminder I survived, made it past, and found happy places for myself that are reasonably free of grudges and resentment. I hope Buckley got there himself before his sad, untimely end. He was obviously a sensitive soul in many ways on many levels and deserved the peace. This beautiful song is one example of what was lost.

Project Hail Mary (2026)

I usually try to avoid comparisons between novels and the movies based on them, not for any particular noble motives but because I don’t often get to books before I see the movies (indeed, if I ever even get to them, looking your way Traumnovelle). This case is an exception—I know Andy Weir’s third novel is reviled by a certain cohort of SF cognoscenti and equally beloved of other readers who may favor entertainment in SF over heavy themes. I can understand how Weir’s jokey, heavily online voice can put off people looking for intellectual heft, but a friend pressed Project Hail Mary on me earlier this year and it turned out to be just what I needed at the time—funny and entertaining yet satisfyingly full of scientifically plausible and complex ideas. Alas, the movie, even at its punishing length near three hours, necessarily simplifies a lot of what is easily the greatest strength of the novel. A mysterious space algae has begun to consume energy directly from the sun, in enough quantity that it will affect the climate on Earth, cooling it to a degree that will likely wipe out human life if not all life. A whole region of the Milky Way has been affected, except for one star about 11 light-years away. A suicide mission is slapped together, sending Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) with two others to investigate and report back—report back via smaller probe ships, that is, because there’s only enough fuel for a one-way trip. There Grace encounters another ship on the same mission. The two throw in together—ultimately Project Hail Mary is a first contact story approximately cubed—and accomplish the mission, though not without many bumps in the road. The movie keeps its explanations lucid but truncated—I have a sense the people who will get the most out of the movie will come into it having already read the book. That’s what I suggest, noting that the movie is not really necessary. You’re probably better off reading the book again, but there’s enough Hollywood magic going on here to make it worth your time. Gosling is just plain good, as always, even in these obvious paycheck blockbusters he’s inclined to do. The story is fun but also realistic about scientific possibility and quite creative and imaginative in addressing the limitations. I mean, that’s mostly Weir, and it’s mostly better in the novel. But if you like movies you’re sure to have a good time here if you already know and like the book. Good with popcorn.

Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste (2003)

This Lester Bangs collection, edited by John Morthland, was intended as a nonredundant companion to the collection edited by Greil Marcus and published in 1987, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. Altogether that’s about 800 pages of the original gonzo rock critic. As a general rule the Marcus collection contains most of the hits—including the famous faceoff with Lou Reed and the previously unpublished piece in which Bangs disinters Elvis Presley’s body and reaches into his guts for undigested pharmaceuticals—whereas this later collection more documents the workaday product of the rock critic: scads of record reviews, including one of Bob Dylan’s Desire in which he takes Dylan to task for making shit up. It’s kind of refreshing to see (see also Dylan’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech), but we should remember Bangs regularly made shit up himself, albeit with qualitative differences from what Dylan does. There is a sympathetic meditation on Sid Vicious and his ugly end. We find out much more about Bangs’s status as a jazzbo. There is a great feature piece and interview with Captain Beefheart. In many ways, somewhat surprisingly, Bangs is a stern moralist, although it is sadly somewhat undercut by his life as an alcoholic and drug addict, his death in 1982 at the age of 33 the result of a Darvon overdose. It’s been long enough now that another factor has come into play. I wonder a lot about what he would make of subsequent developments, even about the artists he knew like Lou Reed and Miles Davis, and certainly all kinds of things since then. His literary tastes strike me now as wrong, elevating Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs above all others. He even slags Allen Ginsberg (but not Jack Kerouac). This is all wrong according to me. Some of Bangs’s experimental writing is found here, but not as much as in Carburetor Dung. Full disclosure, that’s a good thing by my lights. That stuff has generally not aged well. But Lester Bangs remains in spirit an important model for anyone considering the commitment to being a rock critic. He’s cheerful enough often enough about being out of touch or at odds with the mainstream, acknowledging his own “bad taste.” You could do worse on primers about how to rock critic.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

The Great Dictator (1940)

USA, 125 minutes

Director / writer: Charles Chaplin

Photography: Karl Struss, Roland Totheroh

Music: Charles Chaplin, Meredith Wilson

Editors: Willard Nico, Harold Rice

Cast: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner, Henry Daniell, Billy Gilbert, Maurice Moscovitch

Getting back to this movie after decades, I was reminded of the old chestnut that “history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes” when a character named Epstein showed up. He’s Jewish and a powerful financier who must be turned to for assistance by the fascist and openly antisemitic regime of Tomainia, which is basically Germany in director and writer Charles Chaplin’s clonking sendup. Chaplin is Adenoid Hynkel, the Phooey (Fuhrer) of Tomainia, which happens to be in an uneasy alliance with Bacteria (Italy). The Tomainian swastika is two X’s, called the double cross. You can tell Chaplin was not holding back here (though an editor or collaborator might have come in handy). For a 1940 Hollywood picture it’s unusually blunt about its points, which is not to say always inspired. Chaplin also plays a Jewish barber and veteran of World War I who lives in the ghetto of an unspecified Tomainian city (he probably couldn’t think of a Warsaw gag ... where are Mad magazine writers when you need them?). The Jewish barber must endure the problems you would expect.

The picture is bloated at over two hours, ham-handed to an infinite degree (did I mention Rome here is called Aroma?), and so self-righteous it verges on chest-pounding narcissism, which are reasons I haven’t been back to it in a long time. In retrospect, this is the beginning of the end for Chaplin. I hated to see it and all that followed—some, admittedly, with bright moments, but it was also the period when he ruined The Gold Rush by trying to add sound. Still, nevertheless, I could not deny that The Great Dictator hits different in 2026. That’s what made the details of a relatively background character named Epstein so eerily remarkable.

“The Erl-King” (1993)

Elizabeth Hand offers some interesting ideas in her long story, such as reaching for Andy Warhol and his Factory clan, featuring a sort of glitter-era rock star figure who seems to exist somewhere between Robert Fripp and the Moody Blues. I wasn’t much persuaded by it, or more often felt vaguely embarrassed it was even being attempted. But there are also lots of things to like, including, paradoxically, that someone is making the attempt at all. The magic is positively Merlinesque. The rock star’s name is Lie Vagal—“Lie” from Elijah and no idea about the last name, though it’s a pretty good rock star name overall. His neighbor, or tenant—it’s complicated—is Aurora Dawn (another good name), a hanger-on Lie knew back in the day, now washed up, middle-aged, and drunken. Think Nico in the ‘80s. Exotic animals populate the story, as rock stars are wont to go for, which draws Aurora’s daughter Linette and her best friend Haley, staying with her for the summer, to Lie. As the plot develops it becomes silly with reveals that are only unlikely, if not entirely unexpected. Lots of details are planted as foreshadowing for what’s to come. The structure of the story tends to make everything feel obvious or hard to believe or both. Did I mention Vagal is mentally ill? Sounds like schizophrenia. He hallucinates and thinks he sees, or is actually able to see, mythical creatures such as fairies and this Erl-King. This stuff is basically not for me, except maybe the rock star part, a theme Hand has also pursued elsewhere. Hand seems to be reasonably well regarded, winning her share of awards and nominations. This story veers closer to fantasy than horror for my taste but I suspect I will be running into her stuff again. “The Erl-King” does have some nice girl power elements, which is always good to see, though perhaps faint praise on my part. I would label it as a kind of “classy” horror, closer to gothic but not as skilled as the best gothic. Just evoking a sort of semi-contemplative mood. But I always appreciate the attempt to bring decadent rock culture into the horror mix.

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Seventh Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Story not available online.

Spike Jones & His City Slickers, “William Tell Overture” (1948)

[listen up!]

In my Dad’s bachelor days after World War II he became a record collector. Instead of the 33-1/3 10-inch and (mainly) 12-inch LP he more favored a different type of album, boxed sets of three seven-inch 45s. With six songs these albums were closer to what we would now call EPs. I wish I could remember more of the artists (George Shearing was one) but as a kid the one that caught me up was the bandleader and novelty specialist Spike Jones—who, remember, in their song “Up on Cripple Creek,” even the Band seemed to endorse. Jones’s version of Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” is pure controlled chaos, starting from the usual trademark razor-sharp performance by Jones and orchestra—no multitracking or overdubs were available in 1948 recording studios, it had to be played, flawlessly, the way you hear it. That is combined with ... a horserace?! Yes, and in the running are horses named Cabbage (“leading by a head”), Girdle (“in the stretch”), Banana (“coming up through the bunch”), Mother-in-Law (“nagging in the rear”). Apartment House (“with plenty of room”), and, of course, Beetlebaum. My appreciation of this whack job actually started with my appreciation for the “William Tell Overture.” I was never particularly into the Lone Ranger TV show, for example, but tuned in whenever I could for the theme song. Eventually my siblings fell in with me on playing and overplaying this, shrieking at the various gags, and bellowing, at top volume, “Beetlebaum” (eventual winner of the race, spoilers). No doubt it annoyed the hell out of my parents. In addition to the Rossini and the horserace, the song features barking dogs, clanging kitchen utensils, thunderclaps, mellow chirping birds, cowbell, bicycle horns, crashing objects falling down, a man gargling a sappy melody, horse whinnying, and more. “It’ll either be a photo finish or an oil painting.” In its way it is exhausting.

Dune (1965)

I had a nice time finally getting to Frank Herbert’s massive worldview of desert planet Arrakis, the first and rather large installment in the Dune franchise—six novels by Frank, a dozen or more by his son Brian with Kevin J. Anderson, a handful of short stories by these three, and who knows what-all out there in the fan fiction wilderness. It must rival Cthulhu by now for world-building impact. I was most impressed by the complexity of the vision, which drills and drills into Arrakis, with visions of a future social order writ large. Depressingly feudal, yet plausible enough. Powerful economic and political forces colliding in slow motion over the planet’s primary export, a “geriatric” drug called “spice,” created by monstrous sandworms the size of whales and dinosaurs. Somewhat prescient for 1965 perhaps, the conceit of spice is as a metaphor for oil, hence in part the heavy and intriguing touches of Arabic and Muslim culture. Then there is the main character, Paul Muad’Dib, who harks to T.E. Lawrence up to and including the epic 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia. I’ve heard it both ways on this first Dune novel all my life. Even those most positive about it tend to acknowledge you have to get through the first hundred pages, and refer to the handy (or, in the case of the kindle product, not so handy, boo hiss) glossary. I saw what they meant, relied on context, and plodded along. It picks up momentum eventually—before much action can occur it has a lot to tell us about the history and ways of Arrakis. I’m not surprised Herbert the elder had five more finished novels and more planned. Dune comes as some kind of inflection point when the classic SF of the ‘40s and ‘50s began giving way to the SF New Wave. The sources of Dune are closer to the classic SF mode, in a way, but the vision was every bit as big or even bigger than what we’d got from Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, or Robert Heinlein. I liked Dune and got the impression it would reward rereading. I’m probably going to try the next novel in the series, Dune Messiah, and see about the rest from there. I do hear of people giving up before they get to the sixth. I’m quite late to Dune, on which it’s likely you know already where you stand. But I’ll still recommend reading it. You’re likely to get something out of it, and probably it makes the movies more legible too.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Zombies, “Maybe After He’s Gone” (1968)

[listen up!]

The Zombies’ second album, Odessey and Oracle (with one of the most famous misspellings in rock), sputtered out of the gate but eventually became an acclaimed must-hear album of the ‘60s. Its reputation is as a classic of psychedelia (note cover). Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Rod Argent is likely the most famous member, going on to the band Argent and a top 5 hit with “Hold Your Head Up" in 1972, and then a solo career (as if “Argent” wasn’t already that). He wrote just under half the songs on Odessey, including the album’s one hit, “Time of the Season,” a signature song for the Zombies which reached #3 in 1969. Bass player Chris White wrote the rest of the songs and, while they go many places and are uniformly good, some are not remotely psychedelic. “Maybe After He’s Gone” is one such, pretty much standard unrequited love business on its face. The lyrical frame and song arrangement somehow elevate it to an impossible poignancy. The singer is really into his girlfriend: “She told me she loved me / With words as soft as morning rain.” Unfortunately, she is done with him and has left for another. The singer, in a swelling chorus, finds pathetic solace in unlikely hopes: “Maybe after he’s gone / She’ll come back, love me again.” We have all been there and know how it goes. You almost have to fight yourself not to tell him, or try to tell him. The chances are good he wouldn’t listen anyway. He would probably even hold it against you. “Maybe After He’s Gone” captures an indelible moment of pathos that cannot be faked, is not soon forgotten, and can leave listeners just a little uncomfortable. It’s beautiful.