The singer offers gifts, offers to be cordial, but expects no good: “Let’s shake hands if you want but soon both hands are gone, ha-ha-ha!” Is the narrator mad, without logic, or is the world? “Well we all stumbled round tangled up in the cords from our phones, VCR, and our worldly woes,” he sings. Is the technology of the world—the abundance of the world—resource for the fulfillment of purpose; or disguise, distraction from deep purpose?
All Your Friends and Sedatives Mean Well: Cassadaga by Bright Eyes, featuring Conor Oberst
There is an instant when a musician’s work can seem to embody his time, the most important aspects of his culture’s current history, but if he does not change, does not grow in fresh ways, he begins to embody not the present but the past. Yet, the growth of an artist must be true to the mind and nature of the artist rather than a fulfillment of the wishes of audiences and critics; and, sometimes, the best artists give us desires and pleasures we did not anticipate.
The Failure of Art and Its Criticism: The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
The collection of songs entitled Neon Bible has been widely welcomed, although the music and lyrics are not distinguished enough to win compliments from an objective ear. “Black Mirror, Black Mirror, I know a time is coming, all words will lose their meaning.”
A review of Merle’s Door by Ted Kerasote
In the small Wyoming town where much of this story takes place, there were no great concerns about dogs and they roamed free, able to associate with each other and with the people of the town. This worked in a community in which automobile traffic was slight and everyone knew everyone else although Kerasote describes a similar and much larger community in the French Alps where much the same canine freedom obtained.
A review of A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
But while the themes are serious, A Spot of Bother is anything but bleak, or dour. Right from the first moments of the book, there is humour. For example, when George goes to visit a Psychiatrist about his depression, he tells him he’s been taking antidepressants: “He decided not to mention the codeine and the whisky” and Dr Foreman tells him that the side-effects are “Weeping, sleeplessness and anxiety.”
A review of Naples ‘44 by Norman Lewis
Lewis is a compassionate, clear-headed witness to heartrending tragedy, but there are many moments of irony and humour here as well. There is plenty of poverty, horror and suffering in these pages; yet there is resilience too. People survive.
A review of After Dark by Haruki Murakami
This is not a book that develops logically. It cares nothing about loose ends or impossibilities. There is another world that lurks behind and around the world we know and Murakami is disquietingly comfortable in both.
A review of The Suitors by Ben Ehrenreich
This is an amazing and a gripping novel told with virtuosity. His ability to retell that earliest of books is a splendor that constitutes an act of magic seldom matched in the literature of our time. You will do yourself an injury to miss this book.
A review of Mr. Weston’s Good Wine by T. F. Powys
Mr. Weston’s Good Wine is a wayward work. It is religious, carnal, heretical, humorous and engaging, digressive and ultimately involving. It has a complex, personal symbolism that is not reducible to any simple message. T. F. Powys’ work as a whole seems to represent one of the most rewarding byways in English literature.
A review of The Yummy Mummy’s Ultimate Family Survival Guide by Liz Fraser
Although the book remains positive and celebrative of the joy that family life can bring, Fraser certainly doesn’t sugar coat it or suggest, at any point, that parenting is an easy thing. Instead, she provides funny anecdotes that most parents will readily relate to, and may also learn something from.