Southern Bookman

Sally Rooney's "Beautiful World Where Are You" evokes classic novels

Sally Rooney's "Beautiful World Where Are You" ends with domestic bliss, like a Victorian novel.

In "Beautiful World Where Are You," email serves the same purpose as letters did in 18th century and 19th century fiction.

The computer exchanges between Alice Kelleher, a successful Irish novelist resembling Rooney, and her best friend Eileen Lydon at first stifle the narrative. As the book progresses, the emails effectively reveal character and advance the plot.

The book returns to themes of Rooney's first two books, "Conversations With Friends" and "Normal People."

As in those generational touchstones, young people struggle to find love and happiness in a world beset by economic uncertainty and environmental despair.

Not a total breakthrough, "Beautiful World Where Are You" explores new directions, growing more assured as the novel progresses.

Rooney at times overdescribes the smallest details. Those granular moments build into a visually vivid narrative.

Covering familiar ground, the book progresses Rooney's career, raising expectations for the future.

Alice and Eileen in their emails express opinions on climate change, commercialism and career fulfillment. And lovely thoughts on art and beauty to enthrall aesthetes, wherever you are.

A successful novelist, Alice wonders if literature still has any purpose, and suffers a "nervous breakdown." The sensitive and literary Eileen works as a low-paid editorial assistant at a Dublin literary journal, carrying out tasks such as placing periods between W.H. Auden’s initials.

Alternating with the emails, the microscopically observed third-person narration unwinds Eileen's conflicted relationship with Simon Costigan, a liflelong friend of her and Alice.

A dual plot tells of Alice's attraction to Felix Brady, a blue-collar factory worker who wields his disdain for reading and literary culture like a shield.

It's implausible that the literature-obsessed Alice would fall for someone who takes such wilful pride in ignorance. Yet Rooney makes the relationship believable. While Felix's cynicism and hostility raise expectations that he'll turn violent, Felix is slowly revealed as sensitive and compassionate.

In a salute to fellow Irish novelist James Joyce, Felix at a party brings Alice to tears by singing "The Lass of Aughrim," the song that haunts Joyce's "The Dead." As with Joyce's "epiphanies," the moment shows Felix in a new sympathetic light. His and Alice's relationship blossoms.

Simon and Eileen's love takes a similar course. The older Simon, who suffered boyhood epileptic attacks, lived with Eileen's family during her childhood, working on their farm. He also befriended Eileen, who unlike her popular sister was shunned by her classmates.

As adults, Simon and Eileen have a close platonic friendship that turns intermittently sexual. Simon, who works as an international bureaucrat, is a faithful Catholic, regularly attending daily Mass. That doesn't stop him from dating a series of beautiful women, returning to Eileen episodically.

At the end of the book, the two couples draw close to each other at the unnamed seaside village where Alice rents on old house.

Felix has grown up in the village, unlike the others working in a physically hazardous job. He suffers long hours in a warehouse that sounds like one of Amazon's. The bisexual Felix even makes apparently unconsummated passes at the attractive Simon.

While Felix, Alice and Eileen mock Simon's religion, they turn away from their agnosticism toward spirituality and a belief in a higher power, if not organized religion. Showing signs of hasty writing in response to the Covid epidemic, the novel's concluding emails describe both couples living in happiness, withdrawn from the world.

Yes, Eileen announes that she's pregnant. Rooney, the groundbreaking novelist of the millennial generation, resorts to the most conventional of Victorian conventions.

Rooney also evokes Joyce in her passages extolling the Irish landscape, especially a vision of the sea that has rhythms reminiscent of the famous ending of "The Dead."

"Beautiful  World Where Are You" answers its own question.

 

 

 

 

I'm Being Followed by a Cat Stevens shadow

Now I come to praise Cat Stevens.

The 1970s folksinger's "Where Can the Children Play" closed "This Is Us" Tuesday night, the song a nostalgia rush for aging boomers.

Stevens, who later changed his name to Yusuf Islam, wrote the memorable "Tea for The Tillerman" album, packed with hits like "Moon Shadow," “Morning Has Broken” and “Peace Train.”

"Where Can the Children Play" was one of the anthems of the then nascent enviromental movement, which tragically has failed to stop the fossil fuel companies from ravaging our beautiful planet.

Like John Sebastian's Lovin' Spoonful, Donovan, The Mamas and the Papas and the Byrds, Stevens was a significant artist who never quite reached the heights commanded by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen.

Performers like Crosby, Stills and Nash, the Doors, Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, the Byrds, the Moody Blues, The Jefferson Airplane, Traffic, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, The Band and Steely Dan also achieved major careers, falling just below the top tier.

But Stevens' songs have held up well over the years, defining one of the era's dominant philosophies: back to the land environmentalism, peace and love. That conflicted with his later support of Islamic militant groups, which he recanted in recent years, returning to secular recordings under the name Yusuf.

Once I heard Stevens perform at the LSU Union in a benefit for, believe it or not, LSU's SDS Chapter. SDS? Look it  up, kids.

Nothing brings back those ethereal days like Stevens' songs.

Discovering Antonio Carlos Jobim's "The Waters of March"

The red and white azaleas bloom as another March hastens away.

Those ancient colors of war and love arrive earlier now, waning in early April, once their triumphant moment.

This March, I discovered a new song that expresses the month's jumble of sunshine, wind, rain and flowers.

Melancholy at the end of the haunting, if flawed, Norwegian film "The Worst Person in the World," I was lifted out of my reverie by a Bossa Nova melody and lyrics charged with imagery. The song riveted me as the closing credits rolled across the screen.

Google research revealed the song was "Aguas de Marco,"  or "Waters of March," written by the Brazilian songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim, who wrote one of my all-time favorite songs, "The Girl From Ipanema."

Art Garfunkel performed "The Worst Person in the World" version, one of the songs on a solo album Garfunkel recorded after the breakup of Simon and Garfunkel. His lilting voice and bemused/bewildered air summed up the season's confused mellowness.

Later, I discovered a more introspective version by Susannah McCorkle, the jazz singer who ended her own life.

For years, I've listened each March to Ella Fitzgerald's definitive recording of "These Foolish Things Remind Me of You," with its lines "The winds of March that make my heart a dancer."

"Aquas de Marco" will enrich that tradition.

"The Waters of March"

 

A stick, a stone, it's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump, it's a little alone
It's a sliver of glass, it is life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death, it's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brush
A knot in the wood, the song of a thrush
The wood of the wind, a cliff, a fall
A scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free, it's the end of the slope
It's a beam, it's a void, it's a hunch, it's a hope
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of the strain, it's the joy in your heart

The foot, the ground, the flesh and the bone
The beat of the road, a slingshot's stone
A fish, a flash, a silvery glow
A fight, a bet, the flange of a bow
The bed of the well, the end of the line
The dismay in the face, it's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike, a point, a nail
A drip, a drop, the end of the tale
A truckload of bricks in the soft morning light
The sound of a gun in the dead of the night

A mile, a must, a thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme, it's a cold, it's the mumps
The plan of the house, the body in bed
And the car that got stuck, it's the mud, it's the mud

A float, a drift, a flight, a wing
A hank, a quail, the promise of spring
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart

A snake, a stick, it is John, it is Joe
It's a thorn on your hand and a cut in your toe
A point, a grain, a bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard, a sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle, a sting, a pain
A snail, a riddle, a wasp or a stain
A pass in the mountains, a horse and a mule
In the distance the shelves rode three shadows of blue
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the promise of life in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone, the end of the road
The rest of a stump, a lonesome road
A sliver of glass, a life, the sun
A knife, a death, the end of the run
And the river bank talks of the waters of March
It's the end of all strain, it's the joy in your heart

Bob Dylan unveils new chapter with "Rough and Rowdy Ways" concert at Fox Theater

The lights flashed on, and Bob Dylan was seated at an upright piano, the instrument's unfinished back facing the audience.

That was the first sign that Dylan's concert at Atlanta's Fox Theater would be different.

Longtime fans expecting the 80-year-old Dylan to perform his classics were disappointed. Throughout the show, he never rose from his piano to pick up a guitar and stand at the microphone. He did play the harmonica in one song.

With the exception of a sped up version of Nashville Skyline's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," Dylan stayed with songs from his 2020 album "Rough and Rowdy Ways," his first release of new material in eight years.

Aging rockers like Dylan generally perform golden oldies for gray-haired hipsters reliving their youths. The Noble Prize winner keeps going in new directions.

As the night progressed, I was more and more willing to go along with him. Generally reciting rather than singing in a deep guttural voice reminiscent of Captain Beefheart, Dylan presented cinematic images of America's clashing histories.

Saluting a signature song of Jimmie Rodgers, the Mississippi "singing brakeman" and one of the progenitors of commercial country music, Dylan's new compositions evoked Tin Pan Alley show tunes, Dixieland, Texas swing, R&B, early rock and country, and horror movie soundtracks.

The lyrics recalled Old Testament prophesy, the Civil War, American West outlaws, New Orleans whorehouses, travel (Key West features in one song), and the American desire to "light out for the territory."

Dylan's "Rough and Rowdy Tour" band, including a steel guitar, stand-up bass and a driving drummer backing up Dylan's primitive rhythm piano, gave a tour of American music.

After Dylan and the band left the stage, the subdued audience waited for them to return, perhaps to play "Blowing in the Wind" or "The Times They Are a Changing." But the night was over. Dylan had given us a new chapter of music.

Farewell, Bobbie Nelson, Willie Nelson's sister and musical muse

Texas' country music always contained an urban, jazzy component.

Pianist Bobbie Nelson gave her brother Willie's songs that upbeat sound of Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and Austin nightclubs.

Growing up on their grandparents' cotton farm in rural Texas, Bobbie and Willie heard that blast of joy on the radio.

Bobbie, who died March 10 at age 91, was a constant presence at Willie's shows, sitting at her piano, her long hair cascading down from her cowboy hat. She played with intense concentration, a run bringing a sudden smile. Willie's guitar runs rode on a jet-stream above her jazz chords. As he said, she was always there when he returned from his musical flights.

Her impeccable solos showed refined taste and control. Like Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys master Al Stricklin and solo performer Floyd Cramer, she made the piano an essential country instrument, her classical reserve contrasting with the boogie woogie exuberance of Moon Mullican and Jerry Lee Lewis.

As a Texas Monthly tribute detailed, Bobbie was a huge influence on Willie's career, supporting his essential move from Nashville to Austin and building the foundation for his outlaw-country sound. Her love of 1940s pop songs led to Willlie's "Stardust" album, which pioneered the rock era's revisiting of songs by Gershwin, Cole Porter and other "American Songbook" composers.

For 50 years, Willie Nelson turned onstage or in the recording studio to see his big sister there at the piano.

Ernest Tubb Record Store's closure a sad moment for Nashville

A Nashville tradition will end with the closure of the Ernest Tubb Record Shop this spring.

The famed Texas troubadour's store on Broadway offers rare country and Americana music recordings and a deep collection of books. Located between the Ryman Auditorium and the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Ernest Tubb shop with its iconic sign is one of Nashville's defining places.

Like other revered businesses around the country, the record shop is a victim of cut-throat real estate economics and rising rents.

As rowdy tourist bars, bachelorette parties and pedal drinking cars overwhelm the city's entertainment district, a shrine of Southern and Appalachian culture will be lost.

The record store also made country music history as the site of the Midnight Jamboree show, which began in the days when the Grand Ole Opry was located at the Ryman.

After the Opry show ended on Saturday nights, country performers would cross the street to perform at the midnight show hosted for years by Tubb, the gravelly voiced singer of hits like "Waltzing Across Texas With You" and "I'm Walking the Floor Over You."

Loretta Lynn and other performers got their start playing at the record store's show, broadcast nationally on WSM radio like the Opry. Shut down after Tubb's death, the show was revived a few years ago from a small stage at the back of the store. Today's rising stars pay homage to the show's history by performing there.

The Ernest Tubb Record Store is a living museum of Nashville history. Another trendy bar will replace a piece of Nashville's soul.

 

Mandy Moore deserves Emmy Award for "This Is Us" portrayal of Rebecca Pearson

I join the chorus of Mandy Moore fans calling for her to win an Emmy Award for her memorable performance on "This Is Us" Tuesday night.

Moore, the only cast member of the show who appears in every stage of the Pearson family saga, again displayed impressive versatility.

First known as a pop singer, Moore during the six-year run of "This Is Us" has emerged as one of America's virtuoso actors.

Portraying Mom Rebecca Pearson from ebullient youth to heartbroken middle-age and declining old age, Moore increasingly stands out among an outstanding cast. She shone even brighter in Tuesday's show, especially in a dramatic monologue that should go down as one of TV's memorable moments.

The episode revisits the series' recurring theme of the Pearson family's mythical Thanksgivings. Moore brilliantly explores each stage of a woman's life.

As the young fiance of Jack Pearson, winningly portrayed by Milo Ventimiglia, she illustrates the anxiety of preparing Thanksgiving dinner for her exacting mother.

She builds upon that portrait with an in-depth shading of the middle-aged Rebecca courageously seeking to rebuild her life after Jack's death. Her buoyant spirit is challenged by her children's immaturity and her vulnerable efforts to find new love.  

In the monologue scene, Moore turns into a frail elderly woman in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease bravely telling her adult children her wishes for the last stages of her life. The flawless scene was not done in a close-up, but with her family gathered around a table listening. Her last exhortation for her children to live greatly should resonate throughout America.

Moore, the youngest member of the adult cast, including the actors who play her emotionally fragile grown-up children, also interacts with a strong ensemble of child and young adult actors who portray the Pearsons at different ages.

The Emmys and other TV awards shows more and more honor streaming services and cable channels more than network TV, although network shows like "This Is Us" draw more viewers.

"This Is Us" in its first years received recognition from the Emmys including an acting award for Sterling K. Brown. Moore was nominated for an Emmy in 2019.

With "This Is Us" in its last season, an Emmy for Moore is long overdue. Her Rebecca Pearson is one of American culture's great characters.

 

 

Matthew Specktor looks at Hollywood success, failure

Los Angeles native Matthew Specktor understands the shadowy connections between Hollywood and the sprawling city.

Specktor's "Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis & Los Angeles, California," takes yet another dive into the eternal L.A. story of success and failure.

The son of a father who's a successful Hollywood agent and a mother who died young of cancer after battling alcoholism, Specktor discerns the film industry's inner workings and Los Angeles as a city with its own separate rituals.

Interspersed with a harrowing account of his own spiritual and professional collapse, Specktor passionately presents a cinematic gallery of broken dreams.

Published by TinHouse Books, "Always Crashing in the Same Car" shows how the film industry consumes its brightest talents. 

Reminiscent of Fredrick Exley's "A Fan's Notes," Specktor delves into his own alcoholism, conflicted relationships with his father and mother, broken marriage and professional setbacks as a screenwriter and author.

While Exley focused on Frank Gifford as his talisman of glamour and celebrity, Spector seeks validation from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carole Eastman, Eleanor Perry, Warren Zevon, Tuesday Weld, Thomas McGuane, Hal Ashby, Michael Cimino and Renata Adler.

The eclectic group shares an arc of fame and downfall connected, however tenuously, to Hollywood.

Fitzgerald, the patron saint of literary artists ruined by the movies, opens the book. Specktor recalls living in an apartment across the street from where Fitzgerald died in the home of his lover, the gossip columnist Sheilah Graham.

Film buffs will savor Specktor's re-appreciation of Perry and Eastman.

Perry, who married the much younger director Frank Perry and enjoyed a fruitful partnership with him until he left for another woman, wrote the hit film "Diary of a Mad Housewife," which Perry directed. Perry also wrote the novel "Blue Pages," a sardonic account of her marriage. She sounds like a witty, urbane writer in the vein of Nora Ephron, who herself would have made a good subject for Specktor.

Eastman's story is the saddest in the book. An early friend of Jack Nicholson, she wrote his breakthrough film "Five Easy Pieces" under the name Adrien Joyce.

But after that success, she struggled to have another script produced, and to direct movies. Having turned into a recluse, she kept writing, but without recognition.

Following the tradition of other Los Angeles writers, Specktor possesses a good sense of place, making the city a character. In tours through Los Angeles neighborhoods, he cites renowned Los Angeles chroniclers Raymond Chandler, Eve Babitz and Joan Didion.

As a film critic and historian, Specktor makes a good case for a re-consideration of Ashby, who despite directing a series of outstanding movies received less acclaim than contemporaries Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Mike Nichols.

Specktor also calls for a reconsideration of Weld as a major American actress, unfairly maligned by Hollywood and hurt by her own poor career choices. Penalized for her independence, Weld deserves acclaim for her overlooked performances. Unlike Marilyn Monroe, she survived to live on her own terms.

The often recycled stories of McGuane's torrid affair with Elizabeth Ashley, Cimino's extravagant failure "Heaven's Gate" and Adler's feud with Pauline Kael receive fresh new looks.

Zevon's erratic, volatile career is given sympathetic attention. As with his other subjects, Specktor demonstrates that the underappreciated Zevon is worth re-evaluation. He shouldn't be defined by "Werewolves of London."

"Always Crashing in the Same Car" engagingly blends memoir, film criticism and history and Los Angeles culture and geography.

At some point, Specktor must have learned to avoid crashing.

 

Farewell, Ian McDonald and P.J. O'Rourke

King Crimson's "In the Court of the Crimson King" was one of the albums whose music flowed from the dorm windows at LSU in the early 1970s.

The sound waves of different albums crashed over us as we walked through the Pentagon Barracks courtyard. Once the redoubt of the Ole War Skule's ROTC students, the old dorms had turned into a hipster enclave.

Rolling Stone's Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O'Rourke, Ben Fong Torres, Lester Bangs and Timothy Crouse also fired our imaginations. Through the years, I kept reading O'Rourke as he turned from his hippie days to cool libertarian Republican.

Once again, I found myself in boomer mourning for my lost youth after hearing about the deaths of Ian McDonald, the major creative force behind "In the Court of the Crimson King," and O'Rourke.

McDonald, who left the band King Crimson soon after the success of "In the Court of the Crimson King" and co-founded the popular rock group Foreigner, died Feb. 9 at age 75 in New York City of an undisclosed cause. O'Rourke, 74, died Tuesday at his home in Sharon, N.H., the latest cancer victim of my generation.

McDonald played several instruments and composed much of the music for "21st Century Schizoid Man," the most epochal song on the album.

But to me, McDonald's most memorable performance on the album was his flute and piano solos on the ethereal "I Talk to the Wind." Along with the classically accomplished music, the song's lyrics achieve true poetry.

O'Rourke's work in Harvard Lampoon and other magazines and his books were must reading, although I found him less and less funny over the years. He turned into my generation's Mort Sahl.

Each week brings the loss of a musician, writer or actor whose work touched my life. The Boomer generation brought an amazing array of talent to pop culture, for good and ill. O'Rourke and McDonald weren't major figures to me, but they gave me many joyous moments.

 

 

 

Farewell, Don Wilson, the Ventures' king of rhythm guitar

Waiting for the arctic blast, I play the Ventures' "Walk Don't Run" in honor of guitarist Don Wilson.

Wilson, who performed with the instrumental group until 2015, died Jan. 22 in Tacoma, Wash., at the age of 88. Along with "Walk Don't Run," the theme to "Hawaii 5-0: and other driving songs that evoked the American open road, they did one of my all-time favorites, "Wipeout," originally recorded by the Surfaris with its crazed opening jungle cry and pulsing drum solo.

I found a black and white You Tube clip of the Ventures performing "Walk Don't Run" on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, when it was still in Philadelphia

Growing up in Baton Rouge, I loved watching Clark's show every afternoon after school. The teen audience - boys in coats and ties, girls in pearls, up-swept hairdos and party dresses - sat in bleachers, clapping along with the songs. As the musicians played on a stage backed by a huge picture window, people rushed by on the other side as snow fell. Later, the show moved to LA, relegated to Saturday mornings, no longer live. But the kids danced.

On the Dick Clark clip, the Ventures wore snappy red blazers, black pants and white shoes. Their hair was short and slicked back. As they played, they carried out a choreographed dance number. Cool, daddy-o.

The faces in the audience were so fresh and young.