“The Affliction” (1995)

One thing you can say for sure about Joyce Carol Oates is that she’s both fearless and unrelenting about being gross when she wants to be. This includes posting pictures to social media, but here I am specifically talking about a story like this. The affliction of the title is a strange rash that also afflicts the young victim’s great-uncle. The doctors don’t know what it is or what to do about it, but the uncle does—it’s a matter of digging out biological “things” embedded under the skin, as he demonstrates. The highlights of the story are the descriptions of the “things”: “cobwebby strands of bloody mucus-matter, wormlike coils of puss, partly coagulated blood-clots.” Or, “The child had to be held as, with a deft hand, the uncle extracted the things, some of them no larger than a kernel of corn, some as large as a dime, throbbing with heat and of an odor of rankness, like an overripe peach. The operation took about forty minutes. The child screamed in pain and terror, thrashing in the tub.” Detailed scenes of the affliction feel like where Oates is most into it. They’re scattered all over the story. But then, as if to dignify an indulgence, the things become the source of the main character’s art. Over his lifetime—he’s in his 70s in the present time of the story—he becomes a great and renowned artist on the celebrity level, as I took it, of Picasso or Warhol. Oates is fascinated by art and the making of it, a frequent theme in her work. This story is making its metaphorical point obvious with the show of body horror: art is torn out of the artist, and it hurts. In this story art is organic in an unusually vivid way, the result of a process that doesn’t entirely involve consciousness. But it’s fair to say the story also exists to make us uncomfortable. The artist, in his 70s, is in the twilight of his career, fading. Remarkably, Oates does her horror work as a sideline project in an amazingly prolific career. This story, for any of its arguable flaws, is a prime example of one of the things she does best: shock, and more, shock with a purpose. The take on the agonies of art might be a little easy or overstated, but it’s real enough on its own terms. Art makes great demands of artists.

Joyce Carol Oates, The Collector of Hearts
Story not available online.

The Bends (1995)

I don’t listen to Radiohead much but lately I’ve been trying again. I keep hoping it will finally click for me with this exceedingly important rock band to Gen X, compared generationally to David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and Talking Heads. See also the lengthy artist bio by Stephen Thomas Erlewine at Amazon Music. I’m skipping their first album, Pablo Honey, which I didn’t even try for years. My secret superpower happens to be an ability to avoid “Creep,” on which I recall a lot of moaning and groaning about overplay. I never heard it properly until 1997. I’m fond of the Prince cover, I will say (and I thought the way it was used in the 2024 movie Heretic was quite interesting). In the late ‘90s a Gen X friend pulled me aside to clue me to The Bends being the better album over OK Computer. Wow, OK. It motivated me to listen more and, for a time, I thought I could almost hear it. But this is my pattern with Radiohead. The appeal is elusive, out of the corner of my eye if I can see it at all. On recent visits to their albums it has been about the same. My notes on The Bends mention two songs: “High and Dry,” which has an epic guitar solo and a chorus I whistle with. If I’m understanding my streaming service app interface correctly, it might be the most popular song on the album. The other song that caught me was “(Nice Dream),” a nice song but who parenthesizes whole titles? Well, Radiohead, that’s who—brash iconoclasts, experimentalists par excellence, enigmatic rock stars, etc., etc. Their sloppy mode often reminds me of Pavement, who also have never done much for me. At one point I even pondered the emo question because that’s what Radiohead often sounds like to me. I found on the internet that there is a long-running and intense debate about that point. The consensus is they’re not emo. I’m leaving it alone. Like my Gen X friend in 1999 was implying, maybe the greatness of Radiohead needs no explanation, it’s so obvious. Just, perhaps, some gentle re-ranking about which are the better albums. I might try my hand at that too.

#359 on the Pop Thruster Best 1,000 Albums Ever list

Further (1995)

I spent a lot of time listening to this album by Flying Saucer Attack wondering how many other albums (specifically second albums like this one) contain the word “further.” The internet helped a little: the Chemical Brothers (seventh album), Geneva (first album), Richard Hawley (ninth album), Outasight (third mixtape), and Solace (first album). I also found The Further Adventures of Bruce Cockburn, Further Complications by Jarvis Cocker, and Further Joy by the Regrettes. I’m sure there are many more (and don’t forget the Merry Prankster bus, Furthur). I don’t know all those acts but the title is certainly a natural, especially for an outfit like Flying Saucer Attack, British purveyors of space-rock and/or noise-rock and/or shoegaze. Listener’s choice. In fact, the noise quotient from their first, self-titled album from 1993 has been plainly toned down and shaped up here for interludes that don’t necessarily involve gravity or physics. I have to say the band pulls a dirty trick on “For Silence,” a 7:39 piece that starts with a mellow vibe from the bottom of a well and goes about two minutes. Then a break of silence that feels long before it ramps up and trundles into a feedback montage that soars and drifts and only grows in majestic strength, until finally it is abruptly cut off like someone pulled a plug. Hey, man, I was getting into that! My favorite track, or at least my favorite sound effect, could well be “Here Am I,” with a mysterious recurring sound that feels like loneliness itself, an isolated monster weeping in the wilderness. But “To the Shore,” which immediately follows, may objectively be the best workup here, if only for its imposing length of 12:08. Typically, it starts slow and gradually defines itself as a rhythmic groove, finally bringing in their favorite ingredient, feedback, and maintaining a hypnotic space that swirls and expands and soothes. It’s basically everything I come to Flying Saucer Attack for. Also, you can play this album at any volume and it always works well, though different elements work better at different volumes. You’ll have to experiment with that yourself to see how you like it. Me, I like keeping it around for regular listens. It fits certain moods in a way few others I’ve encountered can.

Casino (1995)

USA / France, 178 minutes

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writers: Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese

Photography: Robert Richardson

Music: Martin Scorsese’s record collection

Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker

Cast: Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, James Woods, Don Rickles, Alan King, Kevin Pollak, L.Q. Jones, Dick Smothers, Frankie Avalon, Frank Vincent, Don Ward, Melissa Prophet, Vinny Vella

I believe the general knock on Casino, the one I seem to hear a lot, is that it’s too much like Goodfellas—long movie, sprawling story, voiceovers propelling the action, big lively cast, Joe Pesci a terrifying ankle-biting purveyor of extreme violence. I guess that’s fair enough but I’m still a fan—maybe just a reflection of how much I like Goodfellas. For me, Casino is like getting seconds at the banquet, detailing another big story. Both are from books by cowriter Nicholas Pileggi. This time it’s the attempt of organized crime (aka the Mafia, etc.) to take over Nevada’s gambling industry in Las Vegas in the 1970s and 1980s—the attempt, and the failure. The big narrative arc of Casino was written up by Pileggi, director Martin Scorsese’s screenwriting collaborator here and on Goodfellas, and published the same year the movie came out as Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas. That’s the big picture context of everything going on here, but I suspect the plot points involving the characters are more on the fictional side.

The cast is undeniable, delivering on the high tragedy of a doomed love story, which feels like it comes from someplace ancient. Robert De Niro is Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a seemingly mild-mannered genius of a bookie. For much of the first two-thirds of the picture De Niro plays against type. We’ll get back to that. Joe Pesci is Nicky Santoro, childhood friend of Sam and a made mobster who sees Vegas as a vast opportunity for wealth by whatever means necessary. Sharon Stone is Ginger McKenna, a call girl who is beautiful (well, she’s Sharon Stone) but primarily into money. And James Woods is Lester Diamond, her one-time pimp. Sam falls hard for Ginger and marries her. Ginger just can’t quit Lester, but Sam says love will come in time. What could possibly go wrong?

Thank You (1995)

Roustabout, itinerant Royal Trux, based consecutively in D.C., New York, and San Francisco, are / were a boyfriend / girlfriend couple, Neil Hagerty (formerly of Pussy Galore and the Jon Spencer industrial complex) and Jennifer Herrema. The ‘90s and ‘00s produced a few of this coupled-up type of unit, such as the Spinanes and White Stripes. Given the era and other factors (like noise quotient) Royal Trux probably qualify as some species of grunge but at the same time they hew close to the formal structures of blues, happily mangling them. Herrema croaks more than sings and Hagerty frequently lets loose with fits of distorted squall. Thank You is their fifth album, their first on a major label (Virgin). After all this time I’m not sure how I acquired my copy—some combination of their reputation, my interests around 1995, and maybe the outreach or marketing of Virgin. I didn’t listen to it much until recently, when it has impressed me with its dense sludge, dripping off the axles in great brown gobs. It’s really thick around there. It’s not always easy to listen all the way through. I play it low and worry about the neighbors. Hooks and riffs are buried in the mix for most of these 10 songs, but the only one I remember and can recall easily is “Ray O Vac.” I thought it might be about an amplifier (“gotta build your rock on the Ray O Vac”) but the internet tells me Rayovac is a battery and hearing aid company. I found a list by Brian Mock on the internet that ranked all Royal Trux albums to that point (2015) and put Thank You right in the middle, 7th of 13. It has 1993’s Cats and Dogs at the top and complained that Thank You was over-rehearsed, perhaps because it was their first on a major label. I have only heard it as over-rehearsed since then, which unsurprisingly has dimmed my view of the album. Mock explains the move to a major: “Thanks to Kurt Cobain's apparent endorsement, as well as the major-label feeding frenzy that followed, the big money came a-knockin' for their next kill and saw dollar signs with Royal Trux.” I tended to look into Cobain’s many endorsements, so that might be the explanation for why I have the album now. I should try Cats and Dogs. If I don’t like that one, I’m probably done with Royal Trux.

Pavement’s Wowee Zowee (2010)

I realized again as I was reading this semi-memoirish 33-1/3 volume by novelist Bryan Charles that I’m not exactly a natural Pavement (and/or Stephen Malkmus) fan. I saw Pavement live around the time Wowee Zowee came out, in the mid-‘90s, and they were excellent—a great show. I hoped that would clarify the albums, which I had never connected with, but alas no. In memory Wowee Zowee was the one I finally got, but whatever I heard then was no longer there on more recent listening. Though his path to Wowee Zowee is somewhat convoluted and weird, Charles was a fan of Pavement from approximately Slanted and Enchanted on. If anything, Brighten the Corners (from 1997) is the one he has had the most intense infatuation with. Charles just assumes you get it or don’t, which I appreciated in a way because he’s really never trying to sell anyone on the band. He addresses the “slacker” image that has dogged Pavement and Malkmus since 1992. The truth is they were/are very hard-working. Great live shows like I saw do not happen by accident. Yet, at the same time, there is definitely something unkempt and underachieving about the surface of Pavement. “Slacker” actually captures the aesthetic perfectly for me, but I’m on the outside looking in here. I liked Charles’s eccentric and novelistic approach to this. He relies on his memories and impressions of his experience with the music and also on interviews with a dozen band, label, and other principals involved with the album (including the cover artist). All these conversations involve natural fans of Pavement, including individual band members. They all understand Pavement, often declare the music life-changing, and discuss it in ways that make it clear how much they love it. I learned some things I didn’t know—David Berman went way back with Malkmus, for one. I liked Charles’s style enough I may want to check out his novel (Grab on to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way, 2006) or memoir (There’s a Road Everywhere Except Where You Came From, 2010), wordy titles and all. For all his subdued, dare I say slacker, tone here, Charles obviously loves a long title. This treatment of Wowee Zowee is basically for Pavement fans only.

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

Heat (1995)

USA, 170 minutes

Director/writer: Michael Mann

Photography: Dante Spinotti

Music: Elliot Goldenthal

Editors: Pasquale Buba, William Goldenberg, Dov Hoenig, Tom Rolf

Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, Wes Studi, Natalie Portman, Dennis Haysbert, Hank Azaria, Danny Trejo, Henry Rollins, Tone Loc

I wasn't too surprised when Heat fell flat for me the last time I looked. I've always had mixed feelings about all its main points—jumbo-sized heist movie starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, written and directed by Michael Mann. De Niro and Pacino are great players, of course, even when they're not trying very hard, but they're better when they're trying. Are they trying here? Not in the good way. Several reviewers have noted that Pacino is shouting a lot again. De Niro retires into his soft-spoken cerebral manner like the accountant with funny glasses in Casino. We never forget his explosiveness but that's because we've seen it in all those other movies.

For his part, director and writer Michael Mann is as committed to the visuals as ever, with twinkling Los Angeles vistas providing magnificent backdrop for this tired old story of cops and robbers and how they are more alike than different, etc. The robbers, headed by De Niro, take down Big Scores that require meticulous planning. The cops, headed by Pacino, work a special detail dedicated to chasing down those who would commit Big Scores (with the budget to support the effort). It's all kind of like a Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV episode with extraordinarily impressive production values. Cinematic crimes like this require a lot of showing and much less telling, particularly in the planning stages. Mann's team of four editors, and no doubt Mann himself riding along with them, work out a lot of ways to cut these capers as they go down. They are often kinetically vivid and propulsive with spasms of violence and lots of shoot-'em-ups. But in this movie, which might have also have been called Long, they start to look alike by the time we arrive at the third hour.

Mirror Ball (1995)

I like the disco music represented by a mirror ball and I like Neil Young, but I must report that this album has nothing whatever to do with disco or even with mirror balls, except the grungy sepia image on the cover. In fact, that's Pearl Jam backing him for this one, a band that also has nothing to do with disco or mirror balls. The original release was an environmentally sensitive package, but now it comes in jewel boxes like most of them do. Who even buys CDs anymore? Well, in this case, me. I was amazed to find Mirror Ball is not on Napster, though it is on Spotify. The album felt to me then and still feels to me now pretty close to generic Neil Young product, which I know may be something of an oxymoron for the iconoclastic rocker. But it's full of songs that distinguish themselves merely on the fine points, when they distinguish themselves at all, even as it does remain overall satisfyingly lumbering and not without its winning moments of rockin' majesty. After opening with a curious sort of "Blow the Man Down" play in "Song X" it approaches quick liftoff with "Act of Love" followed by "I'm the Ocean," my favorite part of the album in 1995, with an ascendant keyboard pushing against the pounding bottom. That's 12 minutes of goodness right there. "What Happened Yesterday" is a shorty that works at first like the funeral for the Rolling Stones' jaunty "Something Happened to Me Yesterday" nearly 30 years earlier. But it's actually the overture to "Peace and Love," the one collaboration with Eddie Vedder (all the rest are Young songs). "I'm the Ocean" plays for 7:05. "Peace and Love" goes 7:02. "Scenery" is the longest at 8:50. Getting the picture? "Throw Your Hatred Down" (5:45) is there so we know their hearts are in the right place, which we already knew, though it has some very nice guitar. The single was "Downtown" (5:10), which may give some idea of their perspective. Even mediocre Neil Young has its points for fans like me, so I guess I can appreciate the thudding groove of "Downtown," such as it is. But when you're alone and life is making you lonely it's no Petula Clark. Like the rest of the album, the highs here are just not that high.

Sidetracked (1995)

In the Kurt Wallander series so far, the good news for me has been how good Henning Mankell was at creating complicated plots that fall together. In terms of genre, he still seems to me closer to thriller than police procedural. That has been a little disappointing because thrillers generally aren't that thrilling for me—lots of action and movement but inevitably they seem to reach a point where all focus is on some orchestrated Big Event in a big scene. That said, Mankell is tremendously skilled at it. In Sidetracked he reveals very early who the bad guy is, which creates a nice tension when Wallander and/or members of his team are physically in his presence, unknowing. It's a 14-year-old boy with a Native American fixation who is kinda sorta a serial killer. An FBI analyst is on hand consulting with Wallander on the case—a profiler, more or less, still a new idea in the '90s, so I take it this is fairly well grounded in research. Still, this kid is not my idea of a serial killer. He has too much of a concrete motivation, even if it is lunatic. It's lunatic in a rational way, like the Unabomber. He's also over-accomplished, capable of amazing feats, like a superhero or supervillain (looking forward again to Stieg Larsson). Wallander is tormented as usual by social issues within what he considers a decaying social democracy (Sweden), and his personal relations are strained with his father, daughter, and love interest, who first appeared in an earlier novel in the series (The Dogs of Riga) and has lingered on the sidelines since. One of the main themes in Sidetracked is human trafficking and the unscrupulous rich people who enable it (e.g., Donald Trump, Alan Dershowitz, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton). I like a lot of the elements in this one and it's an absorbing and quick-paced read. It's competently done—above average, really, like all the blurbers say—so I think my quibbles about thrillers are more likely straining at genre limitations. It's just not the kind of Adam-12 police procedural that's generally my preference, but it's sober about the real world, which is also a preference. Mankell may not always be for me, in other words, but so far he's always been good at the things he does.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.

Therapy (1995)

David Lodge is a prolific British writer and literary critic, born in 1935. In Therapy he is witty, charming, and neurotic as he charts the midlife crisis of a successful 58-year-old TV writer, which seemed kind of old for a midlife crisis. Anyway, I'm sure this short and entertaining novel is not strictly speaking autobiographical, but Lodge was about 58 when he wrote it. Tubby Passmore is a certain ideal of the 20th-century urban nebbish. Woody Allen is an obvious model, though Tubby's physique departs from Allen's. But it's the same shtick. He's a pseudo-intellectual—a successful sitcom writer who becomes obsessed briefly with good old Soren Kierkegaard. He devotes most of his energy to trying to solve the woman problems he actively and repeatedly creates. He is heartbreakingly foolish, but rich enough to keep himself out of real trouble. The title is apt—Tubby not only sees a psychotherapist, he also has regular appointments for acupuncture, aromatherapy, etc. He'll try any therapy once. He has a semi-platonic relationship with a woman in analysis, and in many ways this arc of the story is toward a Freudian approach to identifying and resolving pesky and profound life problems. Therapy may be a bit hackneyed but it's also enjoyable and funny, like Tubby himself. I guess my main takeaway is being impressed again with how many British writers are so good. This is not even major in Lodge's canon—a "Campus Trilogy" seems to be what they all like. But Therapy is all I know by him. It's always competent and often inspired, even with its flaws. He reminds me some of the US writer Richard Russo, who is similarly prolific, witty, and just slightly insubstantial. Philip Roth may be the Cadillac version here. Though their obsessions seem superficial, they are gifted and funny writers, easy to spend whole days reading. In the end Therapy is a kind of foolish romantic fairy tale, but there are worse ways to pass a day. In style it ranges wide with numerous formal experiments. Mostly it presents itself as journal entries (a therapy exercise) but even within that Lodge can spring to surprising strategies, which are never confusing and often ingenious. He breaks the fourth wall a lot. He knows you know it's a novel and he seems interested in your opinion as he goes along. Not bad.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.

Law & Order, s6 (1995-1996)

Earlier this year the first Law & Order spinoff, Special Victims Unit, was renewed for its 21st season and also broadcast a 457th episode, thus overtaking the 20 seasons and 456 episodes of the original for third place on the list of longest-running TV shows, behind The Simpsons (30/662 and counting) and Gunsmoke (20/535). No doubt producer Dick Wolf ("awhoooo!") is proud and happy to have two titles in that top 5 but I'm less sure we as viewers can count it as a good thing overall. On the other hand, like The Simpsons (and unlike Gunsmoke, Special Victims Unit, or Lassie), Law & Order at least can still stake claim to genuine TV innovation, so there's that.

Yet the one thing readily apparent from the sixth season of Law & Order is a willingness to play it safe and fall back on tried and true strategies of ensemble 'n' episode TV. Even the signature wrinkle of focusing on institutional roles rather than individual characters is starting to feel a little humdrum. The show's original junior detective, Mike Logan (Chris Noth), is suddenly gone, disappeared for an incident briefly shown in the last five minutes of the previous season. He's replaced by Reynaldo Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) and predictably a bunch of episodes track the awkwardness of his jelling with senior detective Lenny Briscoe (Jerry Orbach).

Oswald's Tale (1995)

I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the assassination of John Kennedy, but I sure know the rhythms of the story now. I noticed it when I read Stephen King's 11/22/63 novel a few years ago, and again as I revisited Norman Mailer's lengthy journalistic treatment of Lee Harvey Oswald, focusing on his time in Russia. Once again Mailer is working with Lawrence Schiller, his collaborator on The Executioner's Song. With the Soviet Union over and a temporary opening of Russian government in 1993, Mailer and Schiller gained access to KGB documents regarding Oswald's time living in Russia from late 1959 to 1962. They also conducted interviews with people who knew or were aware of him there. Of course the KGB monitored Oswald closely. Even now, nobody really knows what he was doing there. He might have been a crazy mixed-up guy or anything. He was followed around and bugs were placed in his living quarters. What emerges is a much better sense of this mysterious historical figure, for better or worse filtered through Mailer's novelistic instincts. I think on balance it's for the better, because approaching Oswald as a literary character does seem to yield insights into the even greater mystery of the assassination. Following his movements and public statements closely, in combination with the KGB transcripts of his domestic disputes with his Russian wife Marina (who bore him two daughters and of course moved back with him to the US), does seem to provide a clearer view of Oswald. He was unbelievably young, first—just 20 when he defected to the USSR, just 24 when he was gunned down two days after the JFK assassination. So we start from Minsk, in the first half of this book, and then travel all the familiar ways through Cuba and Dallas and New Orleans and Mexico and finally back to Dallas again. One more time we see the Montgomery Ward warehouse down the street. Somehow I know this story. I'm the right age cohort, plus osmosis. People are still trying to figure out the Jack the Ripper murders too, so there's probably little relief in sight. Mailer is persuasive—first that there is a mystery to be solved, and second that it remains less than fully explained, and finally, that Lee Harvey Oswald, followed shortly by Jack Ruby (and 38 years later by 19 terrorists), may be among the luckiest sons of bitches who ever lived in terms of doing one or two things exactly right. I don't know what happened in Dallas that day, nobody does, but following Mailer the lone assassin theory now doesn't seem any less likely than any of the others, given that nothing in this episode is likely. Mailer wants to quarrel with Gerald Posner, whose Case Closed was new at the time, and I like that. He pokes some holes in Posner's case, but it's easy to see they could well be only small holes. The mystery endures. Indeed, that's Mailer's subtitle here: An American Mystery. Worth reading for further osmosis.

In case it's not at the library.

Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man (1995)

When you think about it, it's not surprising that, if Norman Mailer were going to write a book about art, it would be about Picasso. He always preferred his giants to be 20th-century egomaniacs—perhaps something about the reflection in the mirror. To some degree I'm on board with that myself, at least a little. There was a lot I didn't know about Picasso, so among other things I have to count Mailer's "interpretive biography" as informative. "Interpretive biography" means very little original research (even Marilyn had some), but rather a survey of select existing literature, major biographies and some criticism, along with his own take on Picasso and his work. Mailer's main idea here is that all of Picasso's innovations were done by the time he was 35, in 1916, effectively discounting one of the most prolific careers in art history. Mailer sees an incident involving the Louvre and stolen pieces of art (including da Vinci's Mona Lisa) as the point where something in Picasso broke. It's a tumultuous time in his life—a breakup of a long-term relationship, the death by cancer a few years later of his next girlfriend, and the coming of World War I are all equal contributors, along with plain old aging. I'm not even sure there was such a drop-off. A few samples of Picasso's art after 1916 in this book are pretty impressive. In fact, all the pictures, including color plates, are among the best reasons to dawdle along with Mailer through the Picasso story. I hadn't known what a prodigy Picasso was as a child. I didn't know how the Blue Period, Rose Period, and Cubism fit, exactly. I suspect someone with more background might get more out of this, but I'm not sure how much they'd like it—that's the pugnacious Mailer problem. Mailer notes early that Picasso was a project he'd been giving thought to since 1962, when he was close to a book deal. He has an interesting eye and his discussions of the art are often lucid. It didn't entirely surprise me, given his versatility as a writer, but I hadn't expected him to be so good in the realm of art, a pleasant surprise. He is dismissive of Gertrude Stein but I enjoyed the discussion of her, and again, this was my first exposure to so many details and so much context about Picasso's life, work, and art. Weirdly, perhaps, Picasso in this telling reminded me a lot of Andy Warhol—maybe it's the combination of celebrity and work ethic. Picasso's art speaks for itself, and if I have any complaint here it's that there's not more art. Mailer generally stays out of his own way.

In case it's not at the library.

Romance (1995)

As late entries go in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series of police procedurals, Romance is not bad. McBain manages to pull a few things together. It's just one case, involving an actress, and from there it gets a bit meta. A play called Romance is being produced, which is about an actress who is threatened and then murdered. Shortly before opening, the lead actress of the play reports she has been receiving threatening calls. Then she is stabbed, though not killed. Then she is stabbed and killed. It turns out she was involved in the first stabbing as part of a publicity stunt. Turning up dead is another matter. The plot is not that inspired but has its points. On the personal side, this is more of a Bert Kling episode, with Steve Carella working as his partner but well off to the side. The main point here is that Kling is starting a new relationship, this time with an African American woman, Sharyn (somehow pronounced differently from "Sharon"). She is a surgeon who directs forensics work for the Isola city police. McBain has certain things on his mind here: Rodney King, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and race relations generally. Mostly it seems like a clumsy version of whitesplaining, but again, at least he's trying, and there are some interesting insights along the way. I like how he traces Kling's burgeoning racial sensitivities, as when Kling begins to notice how often white people mention that people are black, how extraneous and coded it almost always is. Kling also becomes more aware of racial compositions in public places and how they affect the way people behave. For her part, Sharyn is not sure about being involved with a white man—Kling is her first—and that's interesting too, though I don't much trust McBain speaking for her. Overall the mystery story in Romance is a little tired but the impulse to deal with race relations carries it. I'm not saying you won't wince.

In case it's not at the library.

Wonder Boys (1995)

Wonder Boys may or may not be typical of Michael Chabon—it's certainly different from his better known and more widely honored The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which came five years later—but it is typical of a certain strain of mainstream fiction with its sources in MFA college creative writing programs. So we have a dissolute middle-aged white man who is just such an MFA professor in the process of ruining his own life. In fact, the book concerns the climax of exactly that. Our hero, Grady Tripp, is all appetite: an obese whale who spends all his waking moments smoking marijuana, whose marriage is dissolving because he is having an affair (yet another, of course), whose literary agent and publisher are hounding him for the manuscript of a novel that is overdue by years, the advance for which (of course, again) has long since been spent. All events related are in the mode of a desperate slapstick farce, as everything in this sad sack's life is conveniently coming to a head at once. We know the tales of these ne'er-do-well WASPs in academia-land well—started to see them even in the '50s. Let me be clear that I enjoyed Wonder Boys and got a big kick out of it, even as I recognize I've already said enough to steer some (or most) away by now. Enjoyed it, to be clear, even as I noted the generally hackneyed paces. Chabon brings minor new elements of interest to it, such as the descriptions of chronic marijuana use, which I think are good, as well as a more normative sense of gays. In the long run, it's homophobia that is likely to be the death of many of these exercises, so at least Chabon escapes that. Small consolation. They are so ubiquitous now they actually have genre labels and a Wikipedia page—"campus novel, also known as academic novel." Of the "significant examples" listed there (including Wonder Boys), most of those I knew are roughly contemporaneous: Changing Places by David Lodge (1975), Straight Man by Richard Russo (1997), The Human Stain by Philip Roth (2000), for example. Early examples include The Masters by C. P. Snow (1951), The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy (1952), and Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954). It is a pretty long list, and even for someone like me who is tolerant of them, I blanch a little at the imposing volume. So I am all caveats, but that said, I did like Wonder Boys. The narrative current is strong, it is packed with rich incident and evocative detail, and it never slows. You can do worse.

In case it's not at the library.

Living in Oblivion (1995)

USA, 90 minutes
Director/writer: Tom DiCillo
Photography: Frank Prinzi
Music: Jim Farmer
Editors: Dana Congdon, Camilla Toniolo
Cast: Steve Buscemi, Catherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney, Danielle von Zerneck, James LeGros, Peter Dinklage, Rica Martens

The title for Living in Oblivion refers to a state of working on a project, working so intensely that time, reality, and life seem to fall away, leaving a binary existence, working inside of nothing trying very hard to make something. There's a kind of creeping self-pity to it just around the edges, which comes even more sharply into focus in interviews with director and screenwriter Tom DiCillo. Yet in spite of all the booby-trap plot points that threaten to blow it to smithereens of cliché it is an exhilarating ride, one of the best movies ever made about making movies—admittedly a sketchy category, perhaps matched for tiresome potential only by novels about writing novels.

But Living in Oblivion works. And it's not just a movie about making movies, but commits many other sins as well: extended dream sequences, a wanton mix of color and black and white film stock, and for God's sake Steve Buscemi, Peter Dinklage, Catherine Keener, James LeGros, and Dermot Mulroney, an early flush-out of talent in a new post-Tarantino era. So self-conscious is this that at one critical point Quentin Tarantino is mentioned by name (a late-breaking substitution during the shooting for Oliver Stone). Living in Oblivion is thus a walking, talking compendium of every indie hipster gesture you've come to loathe—but it's so good I have to wonder if it isn't maybe one reason all these things became cliches. Who needs to bother after this?

A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995)

USA / UK, 225 minutes, documentary
Directors/writers: Martin Scorsese, Michael Henry Wilson
Photography: Jean-Yves Escoffier, Frances Reid, Nancy Schreiber
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Editors: Kenneth Levis, David Lindblom
With: Martin Scorsese

I'm not always sure what others mean by "essay-film," but I know my own sense of it favors both an individual point of view, and movie clips—projects like Los Angeles Plays Itself and this long love letter from Martin Scorsese, his salute to the movies of America in the middle of the last century. As such, it is necessarily deep-dipped in the medium itself. Scorsese's Personal Journey was made in collaboration with the British Film Institute and originally aired on UK television in 1995 (making its way to the US some three years later). Scorsese is the host, with lots of voiceover explication. Organized by digressive rumination, it comes armed with—and this is the important part—copious film clips. You are usually looking at scenes from movies, occasionally broken up by archival interview clips with great film figures such as Clint Eastwood, John Ford, Fritz Lang, Gregory Peck, Nicholas Ray, Douglas Sirk, and Billy Wilder. It is the medium on the medium.

I was flabbergasted to find out how much I did not know when I first saw Personal Journey several years ago, how much was simply unfamiliar. Yet even in those cases I was hardly prepared for all the daunting insight that Scorsese brings. The Band Wagon, Cabiria, Footlight Parade, 42nd Street, The Furies, Leave Her to Heaven, The Left-Handed Gun, Murder by Contract, My Dream Is Yours, The Naked Spur, The Regeneration, The Roaring Twenties, The Robe, The Tall T—some of them were vaguely familiar as titles. I furiously wrote down every one and immediately ported them to my Netflix queue. Those that are available anyway—a good many are not. I suspect I'm not the only one trying such an exercise, because many fall into Netflix's "very long wait" category.

Everything Is Wrong (1995)

I'd been aware of Moby before Everything Is Wrong, but this third album by him (not counting anthologies and remix projects) was about where I got on board with the larger project—as I recall, it got a lot of warm reviews, and was the shiny object of everyone's attention for a few minutes. It is uneven—Moby seems to have some formal ideas about incorporating electric guitar and punk-rock noise into some of these tracks—something about "authenticity" I think, or maybe it was just that it was still the post-grunge times. They don't work as well. I get the sense Moby decided "punk-rock" meant "ugly as you can make it," which of course is wrong. But not everything here is, by any means. In fact, the high points—"Hymn," "Feeling So Real," "Everytime You Touch Me," and many others, including the exquisitely titled "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" (longest song here, clocking in at 7:22)—are high points of his whole catalog. Everything Is Wrong is not skimpy with them at all. I think these soaring exercises he seems capable of pealing off are just remarkable, reducing me to all kinds of tender emotional submersions. Moby's music absolutely can take one by surprise. It is startling in its beauty, deeply felt and moving, even against one's will, though all he appears to be doing objectively is touching high notes on keyboards, powered by interesting beats. Actually, it's the melodies doing the work, and the gospel sources, tracing dynamics and swells so few even try for, entering spiritual realms of peace and joy. Listen to me. I am often surprised all over again when I play his stuff. Speculation: Eminem hates Moby so much for exactly this reason (if indeed that is anything more than a convenient public stance Eminem has adopted, which is quite possible, though the animus feels real, not least for its persistence). Moby is Gallant to Eminem's Goofus, and everything he touches becomes good and beautiful. No wonder Eminem resents him. I suppose Moby might also seem lame to a red-blooded American character such as Eminem, but hey, Moby is the one with bloodlines back to Herman Melville. In fairness, and as a consumer guide note, the best of Everything Is Wrong is collected (and the least of it eliminated) on the anthology MobySongs 1993-1998, which is probably the wiser use of your money.

Old 97's, "Holly Jolly Christmas" (1995)

(listen)

If writing about a Christmas song in July is perverse, then I am perverse. But the anthology this comes from, Big Iron's Honkey-Tonk Holidays: Christmas in Deep Noellum, appears to be a hard find now, and maybe you want the time. I know you will want it for the coming season. That’s my story and I'm sticking to it. Written by Johnny Marks, who also concocted "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and, indeed, made himself something of a specialist in seasonal fare, though he was Jewish (perhaps, somehow, because he was Jewish?), "Holly Jolly Christmas" is, of course, the classic Burl Ives. It blew up out of a 1964 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special, and Burl has owned it ever since because no one does it better. But that doesn't mean other people shouldn't keep trying, as it's a fine Christmas standard, mercifully short, and there's room on this bus for everyone. Ask Johnny Marks. The Old 97's key right in, keeping it spry and loose, tarting it up with raunchy horns, and inserting a twangy fluid guitar to texture the melody. It feels almost sloppy, but really it's pretty tight, and the song's forward momentum and polish play well against the relaxed performance. Plus it's stubbornly evocative of holiday times. Well, the whole album is, mixing up standards like this and "I'll Be Home for Christmas," "The Little Drummer Boy," and "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" with new models that can hit hard (don't miss "Alcoholidays" by the Sutcliffs). In sum, in short, oh by golly have a holly jolly Christmas, this year.

Savage Art (1995)

The thing I like best about Robert Polito's biography of Jim Thompson is the light it sheds on Thompson's work. What I consider the best of that work—A Hell of a Woman, say—is not necessarily as celebrated as a few, and one in particular: The Killer Inside Me. Granted, Savage Art is a biography, and Polito's critical assessments have to be extracted. But until this I had flailed away at reading Thompson without direction, and often disappointed. Thompson's catalog runs to 30 or better titles, and there are some fairly stinkers in the mess. I know because I read two of them—The Alcoholics and The Criminals, bought for their titles obviously. I was thus happy to see Polito dismiss them quickly, which had the effect of making me more inclined to believe him generally. And he's a good writer in his own right. Thompson lived a singularly depressing life, but Polito's own hard-bitten voice keeps things moving along. Lots of interesting stuff about Thompson and his life, of course. I wasn't surprised but still fascinated to learn that Thompson was a binge writer, locking himself away for intense bursts of work. His best usually has that magical quality of first drafts that somehow came out just right (see also: Sherwood Anderson, Philip K. Dick). It's so rare and unusual it's something to appreciate itself (for all his reputation for that kind of thing, for example, I think Jack Kerouac managed it only once, with The Subterraneans). Polito has also proved his critical bona fides with the two great Library of America volumes, Crime Novels: American Noir, so one always feels in good hands, and Jim Thompson is obviously right in his wheelhouse. Thompson himself is about what you would expect him to be from reading the novels, a leathery old drunk with a marked edge of desperation. A faintly Bukowski type of character, alcoholic and impoverished for much of his life. All that anxiety in the novels had to come from somewhere, of course, and Polito neatly catalogs it from start to finish. I thought the saddest part of Thompson's life, the way Polito tells it, was that Thompson always felt strongly that his work was not recognized for what it is, Stanley Kubrick's late interest notwithstanding. Thompson always held out hope for it—how could he not? At this point, I'm not sure you can overstate his position to the second half of the 20th century, in terms of the fascination for human depravity that wears a crime fiction mask. Polito and this book steered me to most of my current favorites by Thompson. For that alone I love it.

In case it's not at the library.