Posted on

Be All You Can Be. Read.

Will you look at this beautiful thing? 

I’ve had this poster, framed, in my house for more than a half century. Before the United States Army co-opted the slogan “Be All You Can Be” for its recruiting efforts, that was the slogan of National Library Week, with that one crucial addition — “Be All You Can Be: Read.”

I’ve always taken that saying to heart. When I think of my father, who died when I was 20, I think of him with a book in his hand. He was never without. There was a book on the arm of his chair and one at the breakfast table and one in the formal living room. He always had one on the front seat in case he got stuck waiting in a parking lot or at a long stoplight.

And now: I have become him.

Dear Old Dad, as a young man with a pooch. I’d bet good money that there’s one of those wartime paperbacks in his back pocket.

As the saying goes, “Children learn what they live.” I’m rarely without a book. I start my day with coffee, newspapers (one on paper, two digital), then push back in my tattered leather chair for an hour of quiet, alone and lost inside a book.

This poster by Peter Max was published to celebrate library week in 1969. Max’s work was ubiquitous then. Collectors were paying enormous amounts for his work, but I’m proud to report that I got this beautiful thing for free.

I was a mid-teen that year, transitioning to high school, though it was on familiar turf. I was a student at Indiana University High School in Bloomington, part of a kindergarten- through-Grade- 12 school that had been an experiment managed by the university’s School of Education. Super-secret and newfangled teaching techniques were loosed upon students at the school. In fact, the original team name of the school’s mascot was the Guinea Pigs.

But then, in the early 1960s, the school moved from the heart of the university campus to the fringe. The new school was built with shiny metal roofs and was split into a series of buildings. It always made me think of what a small liberal arts college on Mars would look like.

We also became the Univees. I have no idea what a Univee is,

The University School campus. This picture does not do justice to the striking look of the place, but it was a swell joint to go to school.

Soon, we were no longer so experimental and the university passed us off to the local school system and what we called U-School was phased out.

I was in the last class to graduate, the class of 1972.

The building in the heart of our Martian campus was the library. 

Let us now praise wonderful librarians. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from archivists and librarians over the course of this life. Because of my work, I’m often in the lovely hives of a library.

Whether it’s a towering university library (Indiana boasted for a time of the largest university library west of the Hudson) or a cozy small-town ediface (I thanked the staff of the Cohasset library in Massachusetts in my book Everybody Had an Ocean), I find some of the finest people I’ve known behind the desk, ready to help.

At University High School, we were blessed with two great librarians: Norma Miller was in charge and was assisted by Pamela Brown.

Keep in mind. I was a kid with my hormones on a full, rolling boil. There was a reason I rarely ate in the Commons, but instead spent lunch hour in the library.

I was in love. I ached to be older, to be someone with whom Pamela Brown wanted to spend time, perhaps over a cup of coffee, discussing great literature. Too bad I had not yet learned to tolerate coffee. Too bad — as her courtesy title made clear — that she was already married.

There was a reason all of the boys in my class enjoyed trips to the library.

Norma Miller and Pamela Brown

Mrs Brown was beautiful but also kind and encouraging. (Can’t seem to refer to her coldly as Brown or Pamela Brown. She was Mrs Brown then and always will be.)

One day, not long after the spring semester resumed, I came into the library and she was standing behind the counter, and for once something other than Mrs Brown drew my attention.

“That just came in this morning,” she said, nodding at the poster. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I was speechless, a rare thing for me. We both silently beheld the poster for a while, loving the psychedelic artwork, the image of the Youth following a path set by the Seer. 

The Youth and the Seer … or Master and Grasshopper.

And that slogan. It expressed to me the beauty and splendor of reading, of passing on our legends and tales and knowledge, of learning what it was like to be another.

Not that I was much of a reader then. I’d read a few serious books — let’s say “grown-up books,” since “adult books” has a different meaning —and was pleased with myself for moving past my Hardy Boys obsession from a few years earlier.

Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had affected me deeply, as did A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I read A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman and Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. Those works of poetry have always stayed with me.

Kurt Vonnegut in the 1940 yearbook from Shortridge High in Indianapolis.

Mrs Brown encouraged me to read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. “He’s from Indiana,” she told me, as a special inducement. I was always on the lookout for great Hoosiers. (I later learned that my great Aunt Inez had known Vonnegut since he was a little boy.)

Slaughterhouse-Five was followed by other suggestions. Somehow Mrs Brown sensed, without us really talking much, that I was on my way to being a reader. From that point, I was gone.

(We didn’t talk much because I was pathologically shy. I was often nervous and tongue-tied in her presence. Still, she spoke to me a lot. Her eyes told me she was aware of my infatuation.)

Mrs Brown at work. Photo by Skip Augustine.

What was important: Mrs Brown recognized the reader gene in me and made sure it was watered and manured to maturity.

I spent most lunches in the library, usually plopping down in an easy chair to read magazines. ’Twas there, in that library, when I read Joan Didion for the first time.

Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, shared a biweekly column called “Points West” in the Saturday Evening Post.

This particular Didion column was about a young woman so desperate to be a movie star that she used her savings to buy a full-page ad in Variety, announcing that she was going to be famous.

Didion drove to the young woman’s house and took her for a ride, then recounted their conversation in her column.

I saw this as a tragedy in the making and a couple years ago, curious about what happened after Didion’s article, looked up the young woman’s screen credits. She had two: Shattered if Your Kid’s on Drugs and Blood Orgy of the She Devils. No idea what happened to her after that.

For once, I turned the tables on Mrs Brown. At the end of lunch hour that day, I took her the copy of the Post with Didion’s article on the wannabe movie star. “You should read this,” I said. “It’s good.”

When I came in the next day, she said, “You were right. That was a great piece.”

Joan Didion

A few years later, I worked at the Saturday Evening Post and loved to steal afternoons in the archive, reading every column (I’m pretty sure) that Didion wrote for the magazine. 

I owe so much to that library — to Mrs Miller and Mrs Brown. A word of encouragement and a simple act of kindness can mean so much to a kid that age. As a teacher, I always wanted to be like Mrs Brown. She set the bar high.

I was one of the last days of the school year and everyone was getting restless to get the crank rolling for summer.

I came into the library and before I was much inside the door, Mrs Brown was standing in front of me.

“We’re getting ready to close up for the summer,” she said. “I thought you’d want to have this.”

What she handed me was folded into a neat rectangle. I didn’t need to open it to know what it was.

My face must’ve flushed. She smiled indulgently. 

She’s probably in her eighties now. I hope she’s still with us — that she’s out there somewhere, still having a good life. I hope she’s still reading, still helping people.

I want her to know that her gift has been hanging on the walls of every one of my homes over the last half century, and that every time I look at it, I’m reminded of her kindness and encouragement.

Thank you, Mrs Brown. You made such a difference in my life.

Posted on

Up the Ol’ Mississippi

Daughter Sarah called the ambulance over my objections, but what else could she do when I had so obviously lost control? I was suffering a cognitive malfunction (I suppose that’s a polite, clinical term for saying I was fucked up) and desperately needed help. 

This is part 45 of my Asshole blog

I barely remember the ride to the hospital, too preoccupied by what had just happened.

I was thinking I was all right, but as I sprawled on my couch with Sarah and the two emergency medical technicians and was unable to come up with the names of everyday items — keys, coffee cups, shoes — that they held up before me.

I was in serious trouble..

I’ve always been the kind of guy who doesn’t want to make a fuss and who is embarrassed by attention. I didn’t quite feel myself stepping backward into the fog (as I had when I first died years before, in New Mexico) but the inability to talk or to approach anything with reason, was scary.

At the hospital, I hoped to find out what was wrong — but also was afraid of what I’d learn.

The ambulance arrived at the hospital’s emergency bay amid lots of shouting and scrambling around by all of the nurses and EMTs. As someone who often wilts from attention — everywhere outside the classroom, where I hope for attention — I was on the verge of humiliation. There I was, inert on a stretcher, with a variety of anxious faces looking down at me, asking questions.

With my cognition so impaired — that was the scariest thing about all of this — it was Sarah who answered all of the urgent questions with an efficiency and urgency. The medical staff found her helpful in the extreme.

I was moved to a three-walled room in the emergency suite, shut off from everyone else by a curtain. They allowed Sarah in with me, and she was repeating everything she had told the EMT’s and the first-line-of-defense people at the ER. Now she was talking to the nurse who would actually be overseeing me.

I was oblivious. My head is usually a gumbo of the long-lost jetsam taken residence in my skull. At any time, I have a bubble of remembered literature floating into some long-forgotten song, as well as the images of family and the pieces of time I store, those moments that for good or ill I’ve replayed in my cranial cinema for all of my life.

But all of that was gone. My brain was empty as a white-on-white room. All things were muted. I was in the hospital bed, but when Sarah and the nurse spoke, it was if I was buried under a Kilimanjaro of pillows. The voices came from far away, traveling slowly. Seemed that a question was followed by a full minute of silence before the answer. I’d stepped inside of time and pushed at the walls, like a low-rent Steve Reeves in Hercules Unchained.

Inside this expanding time, I had trouble following the conversation until the word surgery dropped like a ripple in a pond.

Until the coming of this routine (sorry, Dad) knee surgery, I’d never feared going under the knife. I would add up the number of surgeries I’d had in my life, but I can’t count that high.

In a strange way, my previous surgeries had not only worked, but somehow provided an odd kind of comfort. It was always good to know that I would continue to function, that these trained people had opened me up, goofed around with my organs, and that I’d survived and would, no doubt, continue to live.

When the nurse left to go get some paperwork for Sarah, I turned to my eldest (and trustworthy) child, now a woman in her late 30s, and offered my contribution to the emergency-room discourse.

“Please,” I whispered. “No spinal.”

“I’ll tell them,” she said.

“That’s how this all started.”

My father was a good man and would never want to embarrass anyone, especially his youngest son. He’d never say I told you so, but I felt it. It had not been my choice to go through the knee surgery under a spinal block, but I knew I’d never do it again.

I had the usual meds, the ones that make patients relaxed and silly, and then they came to take me away to surgery.

“Who’s the doctor?” I asked. I wonder if they’d called in Clifford Gluck. He was the urologist I’d first seen a couple of years before, when this whole health walkabout began. I visited him  to see how it would go if my vasectomy was reversed and I would procreate again. 

And then everything happened — cancer and all of the stuff that followed.

“It’s Dr. Tracy,” the nurse said. He’s the urologist on call. 

“My urologist is Clifford Gluck,” I said. “Shouldn’t we call him?”

(I’d never felt so old as I did at that moment when I said my urologist.)

“We don’t have time,” the nurse said. “Dr. Tracy is on duty.”

I did not meet Keith Tracy, my new urologist, until after the surgery. He was a busy guy that day.

I’m not sure about what they did during that surgery, but I came to afterward, back in the same room. Before I opened my eyes, I heard the soft sounds of fingers on keyboard.

Was I writing in my sleep?

When my eyess opened enough to focus, I saw Sarah sitting next to the bed, working on her laptop. She is an artist of multi-tasking. 

She has a demanding and rewarding job in New York, yet kept up with her work while managing our part of the surgery. She hadn’t even had to take a day off. That’s the McKeen work ethic in practice.

I’d have to spend the night in the hospital, but I felt I was recovering well enough for Sarah to leave. I insisted. I felt like I’d disrupted her life enough. Besides, Nicole had volunteered to help if I needed anything.

My room was comfortable, like all of the accommodations at South Shore Hospital. Too bad hospitals don’t give points for each stay. I would have earned a few medical vacations.

If my brain hadn’t been so exhausted, I’d try to recall all the nights I’d spent at South Shore. But I was too tired.

I settled down into the hospital routine. You actually don’t get a lot of rest in the hospital, since you are awakened every couple of hours for them to test vital signs. Plus, I was catheterized, so the nurses also had to keep track of my urine bag.

The day after the surgery, I met my new urologist, Keith Tracy. He was an affable guy, probably about half my age. 

He talked a little bit about the procedure, but he buried the lead, as we say in journalism.

“We came close,” he said. “You were about 20 minutes away from being dead.”

I had sepsis. I knew little about it, but I knew it was serious shit. Thank God for my iPhone. The often moody Siri overcame her grudge against me and offered this definition:

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that occurs when the body’s immune system overreacts to an infection. This overreaction can lead to widespread inflammation and organ damage. It is a systemic infection with life-threatening organ dysfunction .

From the Cleveland Clinic

So after a few days in the hospital, I was sent home. There was a catheter with a tube down my leg that led to a bag that I had to change now and then.

I could never tell when I was urinating. It was like a tap, turned on all of the time.

I thought, I could live with this. But I knew things were more complicated than that. Of course.

In my follow-up visit at Dr. Tracy’s office, he had one of his nurses show me how to self-catheterize. (Self-cathing as we say in the trade.)

This was tough. First, I had to wash my hands, then put on rubber gloves. Then I had to clean Mr. Happy with an alcohol wipe. Once that was done, I had to face the catheter. It was a plastic tube, about a yard long.

That’s right — a yard. Thirty-six inches of plastic tubing. 

Imagine: you insert that thing up the Ol’ Mississippi and it pulls all that pee from your bladder that doesn’t come out the usual way. 

You use a lubricant, like KY Jelly, to limber up the catheter, and you add a little bit to the crown of Mr. Happy’s head, to make for smooth sailing as the tube is inserted.

For all of your urological needs!

There are many adventures on the journey. At a certain point, the tube has to negotiate its way past the prostate gland. This requires an intake of breath and holding of same. It’s kind of like the Jungle Cruise at Disney World. Once we are safely past the rapids (prostate), we wait for the tube to drop into the pool of urine.

Stop immediately when the flow begins. Push too far and you piss blood. (That happened on several occasions.)

I’d always hated catheterization. I remember my first surgery, a hernia operation when I was 20. The nurse (a male, but insensitive to this procedure) seemed delighted to shove what I was sure was a garden hose up my willy.

That was miserable and peeing was painful for days afterward. From that point on, I asked nurses to delay the cathing until I was under anesthetic. I feared cathing more than any surgery.

All of this happened as the school year was beginning. My administrator and good friend, Sarah Kess, had been managing the office in my absence. There was some concern in the college administration about whether I could return or whether I’d need another medical leave.

I was determined to get back in the classroom.

I was not ready to return immediately, so Sarah K (the K is my Kafkaesque way of keeping her straight from my daughter, Sarah M) covered my classes the first week. She mostly told the students I had had a medical emergency but that I would be back next week.

I wondered if maybe I did need a medical leave. When I looked in the bedroom mirror I didn’t recognize me. There was a haggard, elderly man in my room. Who is that dude and how did he get in here?

But let’s go back a bit, back to when I was still wearing the nurse-installed catheter with the tube down my leg into the bag of whole goodness attached to my ankle. 

Dr. Tracy’s nurse had not yet taught me to self-cath when I made it back to the university. I still had the bag at my ankle, still had to visit my urologist’s office to get the catheter replaced every other day.

I was moving slowly. As often happens after surgery, the primary feeling is of fragility, not pain. And that’s what I felt. I used my cane and treaded deliberately. 

What could be sexier than walking around with a urine bag on your ankle?

Thank God for public transportation, which saved me hundreds of steps. I took the ferry from the next town over, Hingham. It was a quiet, often beautiful ride and afforded time and atmosphere for cat napping. 

When we arrived at the dock, there was a short walk to the subway. There was one transfer and then the subway came above ground and conveniently stopped in front of my building. A wee bit of hobble and I was at my office door.

That would seem to be a full-day’s work, just getting to the office, but my duties were only about to begin.

When Sarah K saw me, I could see myself in her face. She seemed wary and concerned.

“Are you sure you’re ready to come back?”

“I’ve got to do it sometime.”

I sank into the chair across from her desk, where we habitually indulged in our morning debriefing sessions. Those were often the highlights of my day. I know few people with such a terrific sense of humor.

“You look gaunt,” she said. That was my rare moment of joy in those days. Overweight most of my life, I’d longed to be gaunt. Later, Sarah said it would have been more accurate to tell me that I looked near death. Because I was — or recently had been.

My first class was upstairs — and in the same building. I scored on that one, meaning I wouldn’t have to drag my sepsis ass down Commonwealth Avenue to some basement room without windows.

Just one floor up, but I needed to use the elevator.

When I got to class, the students were already there. I made my way to the front of the room.

“I’ve had some health issues lately,” I said. “Would you mind if I sat?”

No one objected, so my carcass collapsed in the chair at the instructor’s desk.

The class was Literary Journalism, something I’ve taught with great joy and relish for decades. I love the subject, so I spent that first day giving the class the lay of the land and getting them stoked — I thought — about journalism that could endure and become art.

I could feel that I was not all there. It’s as if the sepsis had left scar tissue on my brain. I was still not able to retrieve the words I wanted from my skull. But at least I was much improved over my halting, stuttering performance with the EMTs.

Class was a three-hour block, but I asked if we could end early. No one objected.

“Thank you,” I said. “Does anyone have any questions?”

A hand shot up in the second row. “Yeah,” a young woman said. “Are you going to live?”

Good question. I didn’t laugh it off. I told her I’d do my best.

Class over, I moseyed down to my office where I again planted myself in the seat across from Sarah K’s desk.

I told her more catch-up stuff and then ended with what the student had asked in class. I intended that as my closing line of the update, some comic relief.

But Sarah did not find it funny. She urged me to take care of myself.

Then it all hit me: the cancer, all of those medical procedures, my divorce, not seeing the kids daily, my mother’s death. I thought of all of the humiliations I’d had because of my health condition. I’d gotten through it all, but now I had to face this: the self-catherization. This was it. This was the low point of humiliation. I was at the bottom, clawing to get ever deeper.

I had met my limit.

Poor Sarah. She came to work that day to do her job and now there was a blubbering old man in her office. 

I was done. This was it. “I can’t take it anymore,” I told her, choking out the words.

And, for one of the rare times in my adult life, I cried.

Posted on

She Was a Good Cat

It is with great sadness that I report the death of my cat, Ramona. She was a sweetheart and I miss her.

I got her from the animal shelter at the urging of my youngest children and she spent half her life with me.

It was a Christmas seven or eight years ago. My wife had moved about a few months prior and so I was alone much of the time. The kids were with me three days a week but the other four days were deathly quiet.

Ramona

To fill the void, I talked to myself. I’d done that all of my life, but usually there was someone in the other room who’d ask, “Are you talking to me?”

After the separation, no one answered, yet I continued talking to myself.

The kids decided I needed someone or something to hear my yammering, so we went to the shelter right after Christmas.

I went into the cat room. There were several needy meowing cats, but I took to Ramona instantly. The shelter had given her a name, but I can’t remember what it was.

Compared to the other cats, she was quiet and mysterious.

She also was withdrawn, and beautiful. The vet tech got her out of the cage and set her on my lap. The kids and I petted her and made the decision quickly.

“The first couple days, maybe a week, expect her to hide,” the tech said. “This one is very skittish, very afraid of people. We think she suffered some trauma. We found her in a dumpster. But be patient. She will come around.”

They weren’t sure of her age, but estimated she was seven or eight years old. She ended up living with me for about the same amount of time. I’d guess she was 14.

To honor Bob Dylan, I named the cat after one of his songs. (Listen to “To Ramona” here.)

I brought her home and she was as advertised. She hid behind the couch.

But that night, after the kids left, I was reading in bed when I felt a slight movement on my mattress. I put my book aside and there she was. She camped out on my chest and her eyes told me she wanted petting.

It was smooth sailing from that point on.

She turned out to be the opposite of the tech’s expectation. Ramona rarely left my side when I was home, and she would root at my hands until she got the underside of her chin stroked.

Years passed. We eventually lived in three homes together. She survived the arrival of my son’s kitten, Carlos. He loved her and wanted to play with her, but Ramona would take none of his shit. She was the boss.

Carlos

When she got sick earlier this year, I took her to a vet. She said there was an impacted and infected gland. She could offer a temporary fix, but it was likely she would die soon anyway.

A second vet told me the same thing. Think of her quality of life, the vet said, and they urged me to have her put down.

I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Maybe I was wrong.

But she was still Ramona.

At home, she could be her usual self, skittering around the house and challenging Carlos when he wanted to chase her.

But I could tell she was getting weaker.

The other night, still up at 2 a.m., I petted her and told her good night. When I got up at 6 the next morning (yes, I know I need more sleep), I found her dead.

She was a good cat and I miss her. I loved her and she loved me.

Rest in peace, Ramona.

Posted on

Life is Short, So Dance

I am from Indiana, and therefore I am rhythmically impaired. I cannot dance. I would have to improve to become a bad dancer.

But I love watching people dance.

I haven’t seen anything as joyful as the dancing in The Life of Chuck since Fred Astaire danced up the walls in Royal Wedding.

Four actors play Chuck in this new film by Mike Flanagan. As a young boy, Chuck (Benamin Pajak) is taught to dance by his grandmother (Mia Sara; be still my heart).

Against social norms of middle school, the boy joins the dance club. So there are scenes with Chuck and his much-taller dance partner (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) from an upper grade.

Together, the young couple dazzles their classmates by moonwalking.

You’ll wish you were that age again. I’ve always thought that middle school was the worst period of life. This film makes me want to reassess.

Mia Sara beckons young Chuck to dance with her while she makes dinner.

So there’s some lovely scenes with the young folks.

And then there’s the adult Chuck, played by Tom Hiddleston. He starts dancing in the street, inspired by a drumming busker. He sees a young woman (Annalise Basso) in the crowd, who is recently brokenhearted. He extends his hand and thus begins another life-affirming dance sequence.

The film is also in part, a love note to caring teachers. (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Kate Siegel play the teachers.)

Mark Hamill is wonderful as Chuck’s grandfather and he uses his voice and gravitas so well. And Matthew Lilliard has a deeply moving life-is-short scene.

I’m not going to tell you anything else about the movie, because you should go into the theater knowing nothing. Experience the joy of discovery. I’m sure Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert are in heaven, giving us two thumbs up for this picture. I urge you to see it.

This is based on the novella by Stephen King. l best love King’s stories that do not involve the supernatural. He’s so good at writing about kids. “The Body” (filmed as Stand By Me) is a great example of how he has expertly mined his childhood.

I am rarely so moved by a film. I didn’t cry but I came close.

(Then again, I often get weepy at the movies. I was a blubbering mess when I took son Jackson with me to A Minecraft Movie. He was so embarrassed by my behavior that he made me walk 11 steps behind him when we left the theater.)

Janice (Annalise Basso) forgets her heartbreak when Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) invites her to dance in the street.

Posted on

Recommended Reading

I miss writing book reviews.

In the 1980s, I became a prolific book critic for the Orlando Sentinel. Around 2000 or so, I began writing for the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) and then added Creative Loafing to the mix by the mid-2000s. I even carried the title of book editor for a while. Since moving to Massachusetts, I continued with Creative Loafing for a few years and wrote a dozen or so reviews for the Boston Globe.

Alas, the Sentinel, the Times and the Globe have cut back much of the space that used to go to books and to freelance book revievers.

I miss the reviewing and I miss working with book editors, especially the late Nancy Pate (Sentinel) and Colette Bancroft (Times).

I also miss being able to tell people about good books to read.

So, if you have interest, I’ll give you one-or-two sentence reviews of the stuff I’ve read so far this summer. (And it’s been a good summer — Michael Connelly, Carl Hiaasen and Stephen King all released new novels in May.)

. . . . . . . .

Mark Twain by Ron Chernow (Penguin, $45)

This book is huge (1,174 pages) and it sometimes difficult to read because of its size. We need to have a lecturn and a page turner to read this.

But the content? Can’t remember if I’ve read any biographies of Mark Twain, though I did read the first part of his autobiography, about his early days in journalism.

I can’t imagine any biography topping this one. Ron Chernow has amassed an enormous amount of information and woven it into a rich, lively narrative.

He’s also assessed Twain — Sam Clemens, of course — by today’s standards, discussing the question of his racial attitudes and his banning by school boards.

This is a tremendous book and will be the fastest 1,174 pages you’ll ever read.

. . . . . . . .

What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown (Random House, $30)

What a wonderful novel.

Imagine: the Unabomber took his 4-year-old daughter to the cabin when he went off the grid. Fourteen years later, she leaves behind the only life she’s known in order to discover the free world.

That’s essentially the plot of What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown.

There are few novels where I feel I am absolutely inside the head of another human being. I recall Sam, the adolescent girl in the middle of Bobbie Ann Mason‘s brilliant novel, In Country. Fatherless, she seeks to learn about the identity of the man — her father — who died in Vietnam before she was born.

Yea, me, an old guy … I feel that I am inside a girl’s head at a time of turmoil.

This is why we read — or at least, that’s why I read.

This book so well recalls Mason’s ealier masterpiece, which came out in the mid-1980s.

I thank both authors for taking me into a world so unlike my own.

. . . . . . .

To Anyone Who Ever Asks by Howard Fishman (Dutton, $32)

Speaking of disappearing, this nonfiction book tells the story of a unique and much admired singer-songwriter, ahead of her time, who just … disappears one day, never to be heard from again.

It’s another huge book, so well done that you find yourself ripping through this telling of Conne Converse‘s life.

It makes us thirst to hear her music, much of which is difficult to find. This calls for a significant eBay search.

Howard Fishman tells her story with grace and does not waste a word. It’s another huge book so well done you are propelled through the narrative.

This book came out a couple of years ago. You’ll probably have to order it from your friendly neighborhood bookseller.

. . . . . .

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Random House, $27)

I’ve read both of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s novels this summer. (You can see Long Island Compromise at the right in the picture.) Fleishman is her first novel, and it came out in 2019. It’s the story of a marriage falling apart and a spouse who disappears.

This book was utterly absorbing. I carried it with me wherever I weant and would steal moments at long stoplights to jump back into the story.

By the way, it was adapted by its author, whose unwieldy name invites typographical errors. The television adaptation (which starred an excellent Jesse Eisenberg) is on Hulu, if memory serves.

If you’re not married, this book will make you sink to your knees and thank a higher power that you are single.

. . . . . . .

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler (Knopf, $27)

I’m an Anne Tyler junkie and have read all of her novels. Those books are like three-course meals as she explores the minds of characters caught between the familes into which they were born and the families they choose.

This novel is short, yet full of the characteristic Tyler insights and observations. It’s not that huge meal, but more like sampling a few appetizers. Literary Tapas! Short enough to read in an afternoon.

Her writing is perfect. I urge you to read all of her work. Start with Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant or Saint Maybe.

I’m so glad I had a friend who turned me onto Tyler because she said I reminded her of the protagonist in Saint Maybe. I had to read that book to see if I too saw the resemblance. I did (it was a compliment) and from that moment I was hooked by Anne Tyler.

. . . . . . .

Nightshade by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $30)

Michael Connelly is my crack. I confess my addiction up front.

I’ve never met a Connelly novel that I did not immediately devour.

Connellly has so many great characters — Harry Bosch, Renee Ballard, Mickey Haller, Terry McCaleb, Jack McEvoy and others. This book introduces a new character — Stillwell, a detective who’s been exiled from downtown LA to Catalina Island.

I’ve never been to Catalina, but after Conelly’s evocative writing, I feel like a local.

Seriously: this guy’s writing is intoxicasting as a drug.

Light up! Enjoy, before his novels are designated controlled substances by the DEA.

. . . . . . .

Fever Beach by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf, $30)

Carl Hiaasen‘s books are propelled by rage humor. He’s so angry at injustice that he can only channel his operatic temper through vicious comedy.

How many authors — after 30 years of writing novels — are still peaking? Hiaasen’s last novel, Squeeze Me, was his masterpiece. Fever Beach is a suitable follow up.

The world sucks and it’s being run by assholes. You will enjoy his rage against the machine.

And by the way, you will not find a word out of place. This man is an immaculate storyteller.

. . . . . . .

Not by Type by E Jean Carroll (St. Martin’s, $30)

E Jean Carroll reached out to me in the early 1990s after I’d published my first book on Hunter S. Thompson and she was working on hers.

We crossed paths online again years later when my BU administrator turned out to be E Jean’s former PA.

E Jean is an Indiana University graduate. And … a cheerleader! There’s a good chance I lusted after her when I as a high school kid in the stands and she was jumping like popcorn on the sidelines.

Not My Type is Carroll’s account of her Trump trials. It’s unsparing, brutal and quite funny at times.

And I have always liked E Jean’s humor. I now also admire her resiliance and restraint.

I’ve read a lot of Trump Porn, including excellent books by Bob Woodward and Maggie Haberman. This book is a must-read for all of you out there preparing articles of impeachment.

. . . . . . .

A Few Words in Defense of Our Country by Robert Hilburn (DaCapo Press, $34)

It’s been a Randy Newman summer here at the ol’ homestead.

What a great artist! Has there ever been a more vicious song than “Sail Away”? His songs should be used to teach American history.

Robert Hilburn gives us the blow-by-blow of Newman’s life and gives us a new appreciation of this American treasure.

Hilburn’s writing is exceptional.

Alas, I wish the publisher had a better copy editor. I was shocked by not only the copy editing but the presece of a few minor errors of fact. Minor they may be but if newspaper and book publishers paid and respected excellent copy editors, it would be an even-more-groovy world.

. . . . . .

Hold the Line by Michael Fanone (Atria Books, $28)

I’ve been interested in this guy ever since he came into mass consciousness after the January 6 attack on the nation’s capitol.

Michael Fanone has written a powerful memoir. He was defending the Capitol on January 6 and was tasered by the rioters. He suffered a heart attack and a brain injury.

The first part of the book deals with his earlier career as an undercover cop. It’s nice to see the lid lifted on policing and Fanone does not shrink from telling the bad along with the good. This part reminded me of Serpico by Peter Maas.

Fanone holds back nothing. He drops a lot of fucks and motherfuckers here and there, and does so deftly.

Some of these words are used to describe such weasels as Jim Jordan of Ohio and Lindsay Graham of the great state of South Carolina. Those guys are botches of humanity. Same goes for former House speaker Kevin McCarthy.

When you finish this book, you will want to call Fanone and ask him to run for congress.

He is a great American.

. . . . .

Never Flinch by Stephen King (Scribner, $32)

Steve, Old Boy, I enjoy your work but can you cut back on the appositives and all the off-tangent parenthetical stuff?

Minor bitches, these.

Stephen King once again gives us his wonderful protagonist, Holly Gibney, who first showed up in Mr Mercedes.

King said she was planned as a minor character who soon grasped his heart. he has confessed that he fell in love with her.

That’s understandale.

King just keeps getting better and better.

These Gibney novels are catnip. Read them in whatever order you want. The Mr Mercedes trilogy is a good place to start. Or you can start with The Outsider.

Get off your ass and read one of these books!

. . . . .

I’ve also been reading a lot of older stuff this summer.

I’ve been on a hard-boiled crime-fiction binge, reading James M. Cain, Jim Thompson and Raymond Chandler. I love the way those dudes write. I believe they can clear out all the useless stuff in our brains. Reading their books is like using a mental supposiitory.

I also read the only major work of Flannery O’Connor‘s that I’d never read — The Violent Bear it Away. I’d read her stories, her only other novel (Wise Blood) and even her prayer journal. I was surprised by the fluid nature of this narrative. It was one of those novels you inhale.

If you’ve never read any of her work, I urge you to read Flannery O’Connor. She is life-changing.

Posted on

The Heroes of Woodstock

This was written for Curiosity Stream.

The Woodstock Music and Arts Fair wasn’t even in Woodstock when it planted its cultural flag 55 years ago. Woodstock didn’t want  the festival. Neither did neighboring towns in upstate New York. An industrial park downstate even passed on the opportunity.

Woodstock Ventures logo (PRNewsFoto/Woodstock Ventures)

So when we look back on that momentous weekend of music, the first hero we see is a dairy farmer named Max Yasgur, who offered his fields near White Lake, New York, to the high and hirsute concertgoers.

The festival’s four investors saw the horde descending on the concert site and decided to forego profit and turn it into a free-for-all. Though it took years to repay the debt, it was the right decision.

For the record, the business half of the mangement team was John Rosenman and John Roberts, self-described as “young men with unlimited capital.” The music-and-artists half of the team was promoter Michael Lang — the ever-smiling explosion of curls who became the face of Woodstock — and Artie Kornfeld.

(Kornfeld had an interesting career trajectory. He was just a few years down the road from the time he wrote car songs with Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Jan Berry of Jan and Dean. After that, he became the producer for the Cowsills, the family band he had brought to prominence. The Cowsills became the model for the television show “The Partridge Family.”)

Certain impending apocalyptic disaster was avoided due to the soothing and soporific voice of emcee Chip Monck, cautioning the crowd about poor-quality acid, and Hugh Romney (aka “Wavy Gravy”), the commune leader who helped feed the masses and care for those overcome by the event and / or drugs.

Romney deserves enormous credit, not only for helping Monck keep a calming and placid lid on the weekend, but for solving the too-real problem of feeding many more guests than were expected. (Apropos of nothing, it’s interesting to note that Romney was married to Jahanara Romney, who — as Bonnie Beecher — had inspired the song “Girl from the North Country,” written by her college-era boyfriend, Bob Dylan.)

That weekend also gave us indelible images of a generation of musicians:

Jimi Hendrix played to the departing crowds on the festival’s last day,  delivering a pre-elegiac performance. (He was dead 13 months later.) His version of the national anthem became iconic.

Janis Joplin sang with grit and fervor, lost and fragile and unbearably intimate in front of a half-million listeners.

Sly Stone was his revolutionary self, bringing together the sacred and profrance with a beat you could dance to.

Rain-soaked Joe Cocker passed on a message from the absent Beatles: we get by with a little help from our friends.

Of course, not everyone as at their best. Members of the Grateful Dead still shake their heads over how bad they were at Woodstock. Jerry Garcia once said the Dead always seemed to be at their worst when they had the largest audiences.

Maybe you were among the half million that wallowed in Max Yasgur’s mud. The odds are against it, so what you know of Woodstock comes from the three-hour documentary film — oddly, called Woodstock — released in 1970.

The film crew that worked for director Michael Wadleigh included a diminutive cameraman scrambling around the front of the stage.

That young filmmaker, Martin Scorsese, trained his camera on the ecstatic faces and the skilled-and-sure fingers of the performers. He offered the film audience an intimate view of musicians at work. (Let’s tip our hat to Scorcese’s long-time collaborator, Thelma Schoonmaker, whose innovative editing talents conveyed the weekend’s magic.)

Woodstock was the career-making performance by a new group from San Francisco called Santana. Michael Shrieve, the group’s drummer, had turned 20 just the month before. The closeup images of Shrieve that appeared a year later in the Woodstock documentary showed a creative mind at work — you can admire Shrieve’s ability during his solo, but the camera’s focus on his eyes as he challenges and surprises himself is revelatory.

It’s a rare and wonderful look at an artist at work. More than a half-century after that weekend, we still have that. All those involved in telling the story are heroes of a sort.

Woodstock set a standard still in need of an equal.

Posted on

An Auto Biography

This is a remembrance of my mother’s last car, which I have donated to National Public Radio.

My mother wasn’t like the other mothers. To borrow the title from a Steve Reeves classic of my movie-going youth, she was Hercules Unchained. My friends’ mothers (and fathers) were dull, doing the ol’ lives-of-quiet-desperation thing, while mine looked at life as a continual weenie roast.

My mother had a great sense of humor and a love for all things new and fun. Even in her seventies and eighties, she referred to her contemporaries as the old folks or geezers. If we’re only as old as we feel, my mother remained 19 almost all of her life.

Dear Old Dad and Mom

This is not to imply that she was an irresponsible parent. She artfully raised three children. When my father died (young, at 53)  the three of us were out of the house, so she didn’t have to worry about taking care of children as a single parent. 

She was devastated by my father’s death. Perhaps because it was so sudden and came when both of them were barely in their fifties, she felt life’s brevity more clearly than most and decided to squeeze everything she could from it.

Cars were always important to us. We were a military family and moved a lot. Along the way, Dad collected convertibles. When I was a young boy, we were stationed in Europe and all five of us fit into a Triumph TR-3, despite the fact that the car did not have a back seat or seatbelts. We were a lot smaller then. 

My mother once drove 120 miles per hour on the autobahn. Life was a weenie roast, as I say.

When we returned to the States, Dad began his Cadillac obsession. For several years, we had only two legal drivers in the house yet had three cars — two Cadillacs and the Triumph, all convertibles. One of the Caddies was candy-apple red. There must have been something extra in the formula in Detroit the day they painted that car because I’ve never seen a color like it. Strangers approached my father in parking lots to gush over how much they admired it.

But it aged and was traded away. So were the others, always replaced by Cadillac convertibles. Finally — years later, out of the military and in private practice — Dad found another candy-apple red Cadillac convertible, an El Dorado that would qualify us for yacht-club membership. A few months after buying the car, he died.

1973 Cadillac El Dorado

Mom kept the car but rarely drove it. Too painful, she said. 

She began her relationships with Chrysler convertibles — first LeBarons, then Sebrings. It fell to me eventually to sell the Cadillac. During a visit, I found I needed a car for an unexpected road trip. Mom told me to take the car and not bring it back. I sold it to a collector in Dallas.

My mother outlived my father by 44 years. Into her late eighties, she still drove. Her last car was a champagne-colored Chrysler Sebring convertible. She was a careful driver, never had an accident, never even got a ding in the door.

When she was too old to drive and moved to an assisted-living place, she gave me the car. It was 15 years old by then. I had to drive it cross country, from my mother’s home in the Midwest, to Massachusetts. The drive went without a hitch and the car turned some heads when we drove through Cooperstown, where I showed my son the Baseball Hall of Fame.

But over the years, the inevitable problems began. I considered it my weekend car. I’d put the top down — even in January, when we’d have an occasional good day — and cruise the towns along the South Shore, where I live.

Its last gasp came when my two youngest sons — just little boys when I got the car — used it to take their dates to the high school prom. They posed in their tuxes by the old convertible. It had one last night on the town.

2000 Chrysler Sebring

After a quarter century, the car still had its looks but became unreliable and, finally, undriveable. 

My mother died at 96. I held on to the car. When a mechanic quoted a several-thousand dollar estimate to make vital repairs, I knew it was time to let it go. It was hard to do, I told the mechanic. I had sentimental reasons.

My mother would have understood. When my father’s Cadillac sat rarely driven in the garage after his death, I’d urged her to do something with it. “Maybe we could turn it into a planter in the back yard,” I told her. I’d get a smile but no words.

At least her Sebring has come to a more useful end, in the arms of public radio.

The last gasp: Son Travis and Georgia, his prom date, take the Sebring for one last ride.

Posted on

“Give This Man a Beer”

Screenwriter Robert Towne died this week. He was a master at his craft and was the genius behind Chinatown, Shampoo, The Yakuza, Tequila Sunrise, Greystoke and Personal Best. He also did uncredited script-doctor work on Bonnie and Clyde, McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Missouri Breaks and Heaven Can Wait.

Towne had a regular family of collaborators — Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty most prominently.

But he also worked with one of the great directors of the 1970s, that glorious decade for films. Those years gave us some of the greatest work from Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg.

And also Hal Ashby, often overlooked when it comes to the great directors of that era.

But let’s look at Ashby’s resume:

Shampoo, Harold & Maude, Coming Home, Being There, Bound for Glory, Eight Million Ways to Die and many others.

Not bad. That’s like my list of favorite films from the seventies (and a couple into the eighties). I think Being There is one of the great American films and the performance by Peter Sellers is a magnificent study in restraint.

These two talents — Towne and Ashby- — intersected in 1973 with The Last Detail, based on Darryl Ponicsan‘s novel.

It’s not always easy to find this movie, so I was happy to see that Prime Video picked it up. It streams there.

This may be the most profane film ever made and Billy Badass Buddusky is one of Nicholson’s greatest roles. The plot is simple: sailors Billy Badass and Mule (Otis Young) are assigned to Shore Patrol duty in order to escort young Meadows (Randy Quaid) from Naval Station Norfolk to the Navy prison in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Meadows is a kid, a virgin, an innocent, a guy who hasn’t lived yet. He’s going to prison for eight years for trying to lift some money ($40, if memory serves) from a charity donation box.

Quaid and Nicholson, camped out in a hotel room, doing their part to kill off 300 beers

The three of them have to pass through several states to get to Portsmouth and Badass and Mule decide to give the kid a dose of fun before he’s locked away.

As Billy Badass says, “No fucking Navy’s going to give some fucking kid eight years in the fucking brig without me taking him out for the time of his fucking life.”

Meadows isn’t even 21 so Badass and Mule take him to a bar when they hit New York City. The bartender refuses to serve them and when Billy Badass becomes belligerent, the barkeep threatens to call the Shore Patrol. Nicholson slams his piece on the bar and says, “I am the motherfucking Shore Patrol!”

Perhaps that scene is not as iconic as Nicholson’s diner scene from Five Easy Pieces, but it ought to be.

Nicholson and Young are excellent. Though Randy Quaid had made a couple of fims before this — notably, The Last Picture Show — this was the first sign of what an excellent actor he was. For those who only know him as Cousin Eddie from the Vacation films or for his sometimes-erratic behavior in his private life, his performance as Meadows will come as a revelation.

Badass and Mule don’t want to see Meadows to go off to eight years in prison without getting laid, so they arrange for the services of a prostitute, played by Carol Kane, in her screen debut.

I’m not a press agent for old movies, but I hope I’ve interested you in tracking down this excellent and oft-overlooked film.

Nicholson, Quaid and Towne were nominated for Academy Awards. Alas, there were no winners for The Last Detail. Ashby didn’t even get nominated.

Towne wrote the screenplay several years before the film was produced. Hollywood’s studio czars considered it too profane to film. When it was finally made, it set the record for use of the word fuck in a film.

I often say that the most important reason for the Internet to exist is to provide a platform for IMDB, the Internet Movie Database. Not only does it help us settle arguments about in what earlier film we’ve seen this or that actor, it also has fun stuff like trivia and quotes from films.

So below, from IMDB, some of Towne’s dialogue from The Last Detail.

Rest in peace, Robert Towne.

Buddusky ruminates on Meadows’ fate. The donation box from which he tried to lift the money was for the favorite charity of the wife of the Navy base’s commander.

Buddusky: Boy, they really stuck it to ya, didn’t they, kid! Stick it in and break it off. Up your giggy with a wah-wah brush, stick it in an’ break it off.

The three sailors come across a conciousness raising group and Meadows takes up chanting. This helps when they meet a beautiful woman at a bar.

Buddusky: If this guy gets pussy out of this, I’m gonna eat my fucking flat hat, man.

Mulhall: Yeah, and I’m going to start chanting too.

Meadows: [returns to table with Mulhall and Buddusky] Hey, you guys? Drop your socks and grab your cocks. We’re going to a party.

The New York bartender won’t serve Buddusky and company. He nods toward Young, who is black, and says he would only serve him because the law forces him to. Buddusky threatens to kick the bartender’s ass.

Bartender: You try it, and I’ll call the shore patrol.

Buddusky: I am the motherfucking shore patrol, motherfucker! I am the motherfucking shore patrol! Give this man a beer.

Meadows: I don’t want a beer.

Buddusky: You’re gonna have a fuckin’ beer!

Buddusky is frustrated by Meadows’ passivity.

Meadows: Hey, you guys mind if I say somethin’? That guy at the bar, why did you get so mad at him? I don’t blame him not givin’ me a beer.

Buddusky: Hey, don’t you never get mad at nobody?

Meadows: Well, sure I do, yeah.

Mulhall: Who do you get mad at?

Meadows: Not at somebody who’s doing their job.

Buddusky: Who, then?

Meadows: Injustice.

Buddusky: Bullshit! You never get mad at nobody. You’re just a pussy!

Meadows: I do too get mad.

Mulhall: Did you ever get mad at the old man for what he done to you?

Meadows: Well, he was just…

Buddusky: …doin’ his job. Hey, they’re gonna take eight years outta your life, man.

Meadows: Six years. You said six! [Buddusky told Meadows he could get two years off for good behavior.]

Buddusky: Hey, what the fuck difference does it make? You don’t even care about it.

Mulhall: Come on, Badass, that don’t help him.

Buddusky: Fuck help, fuck fair! Fuck injustice! Don’t you ever just wanna fuckin’ whomp and stomp on someone, bite off their ear, just to do it…? I mean just to do it, just to get it out of your system?

Mule, Meadows and Badass

Badass and Mule ponder what prison will be like for Meadows.

Buddusky: He don’t stand a chance in Portsmouth, you know. You know that, don’t you? Goddamn grunts, kickin’ the shit outta him for eight years… he don’t stand a chance.

Mulhall: I don’t want to hear about it.

Buddusky: ‘Maggot’ this, ‘maggot’ that… Marines are really assholes, you know that? It takes a certain kind of a sadistic temperament to be a Marine.

Badass takes Meadows to an adult bookstore, to prepare him for his deflowering

Meadows: [looking at porn] Are they really doing that when they take that picture?

Buddusky: [pause] Well, kid, there’s more things in this life than you can possibly imagine. I knew a whore once in Wilmington. She had a glass eye… used to take it out and wink people off for a dollar.

Meadows prematurely ejaculates while undressing with the prostitute. She considers her transaction with Meadows to be over, meaning he will remain a virgin. This is intolerable to his mentor.

Buddusky: You wanna try it again, kid?

Meadows: Yeah.

Buddusky: [to prostitute] Okay, honey.

Mulhall: Don’t worry about it, kid… plenty more where that came from.

Buddusky: You got all night, kid.

Earlier, before going to the brothel, the sailors hook up with a woman in a bar. She and her friends offer to take the sailors to a party, but they have no interest in anything other than chanting and lamenting the military industrial complex.

Meadows: If you’re Catholic, do you think it’s, uh, sacrilegious to chant?

Buddusky: Did it get you laid?

Meadows: No.

Buddusky: Then, Meadows, what the fuck do you want to go on chanting for?

Mulhall: Chant your ass off, kid. But any pussy you get in this world, you gonna have to pay for, one way or another.

Buddusky: Hallelujah!

Mule lays out parameters for his relationship with Badass.

Mulhall: I consider myself in jeopardy with you, man, understand? In jeopardy. This ain’t no farewell party an’ he ain’t retirin’. Understand? He’s a prisoner an’ we’re takin’ ‘im to the jailhouse. An’ you have a tendency to forget that. You’re a menace, man. You ain’t no simple shit, Bad-Ass, you’re a motherfuckin’ menace. But from now on, MAA can go piss up a rope! You ain’t no honcho! An’ I wanna hear no more of this horseshit psychology jive! No more turnin’ that boy’s head around to prove what a fuckin’ big man you are! You’re a lifer like me! Navy’s the best thing ever happened to me, an’ I don’t want’cha to fuck me up, ya understand?

Buddusky’s response to a woman’s sarcastic remark about his navy uniform.

Buddusky: You know what I like most about this uniform? The way it makes your dick look.

Posted on

22 Chicken Skin Moments

Ry Cooder

Chicken Skin Music was the title of a Ry Cooder album of long ago. The title referred to music that gave you chills.

Since we waste time on social media with lists, I decided to list the songs that unfailingly give me this feeling.

Goose bumps. Hair on the back of the neck. That stuff. Nearly all Celtic music does that to me. It must be my ancestors calling.

But for the list. I’ll try to be specific and point out the parts of songs that affect me so.

This is just today’s list. Another day might be radically different.

Great collection of songs here. You can thank me later for giving you this wonderful afternoon of listening. Click on the title to hear the music.

Let’s start with Ryland Peter Cooder.

“Rally ‘Round the Flag” by Ry Cooder. He sounds like the last survivor of Chickamauga. He can barely mutter the battle cry of freedom, but he’s determined to try. This might get us off to a slow start with our musical program, but so what? I believe that’s Van Dyke Parks on piano. Great slide playing, of course. (Ry Cooder, duh.)

“My Back Pages” by the Byrds.  The whole thing, but especially McGuinn’s evocative solo. We could also add “Chestnut Mare.” To me, the solo carries the emotional weight of the brilliant lyrics. This has become my motto — I was so much older then; I am younger than that now.

“Series of Dreams” by Bob Dylan . Especially his buildup to the fade and the fade. There’s something swirling and mythic and wonderful about this song. I always put it on repeat. I’ve often played it four or five times in a row.

Aretha Franklin

“The Dark End of the Street” by Aretha Franklin. There are so many great versions of this song, from James Carr‘s original to the version by the songwriter, Dan Penn. (The Clarence Carter version is below.) But the bridge of Franklin’s version takes us to Jupiter. It’s truly, deeply otherworldly. And that desperation: “They’re gonna find us, they’re gonna find us.”

“Mother Country” by John Stewart. Especially the second verse about the blind man in the sulky. I don’t like narration in songs, but John Stewart pulls it off. From the opening strum, this song has me.

“This Whole World” by the Beach Boys. Brian Wilson’s moment at the end, when the instruments drop out and it’s just him. Or maybe that’s Carl Wilson. They give us this whole world … and they bring it in under two minutes. This is beauty and craftsmanship.

“Not Fade Away” by the Rolling Stones. The opening chords. I fucking love Buddy Holly, but dude, the Stones beat you at your own game on this one.

Nanci Griffith

“Gulf Coast Highway” by Nanci Griffith. She kept re-recording this, but she got it right the first time (in the 1988 recording) with Mac MacAnally. When she gets to the final verse, I nearly go into a coma. If only she’d spelled her first name Nancy, she would have been perfection.

“Candy’s Room” by Bruce Springsteen. After the whispered introduction, Max Weinberg’s drums explode into the song and create one of those Great Moments in Rock’n’Roll History.

“Sweet Old World” by Emmylou Harris. Just about everything on the Wrecking Ball album gives me chills. It’s that Daniel Lanois fellow, her producer. He knows how to push those buttons. For more Emmylou chicken skin, listen to her Christmas album as Neil Young flies in from Mars to warble ‘hallelujah’ in the background of  “Light of the Stable.”

“Four Strong Winds” by Ian and Sylvia. The whole damn thing. A nearly perfect recording. Ian Tyson gets the testosterone boiling. This is a beautiful blend of male and female voices. Sylvia Fricker sings so beautifully on “Someday Soon.”

The Beach Boys

“Add Some Music to Your Day” by the Beach Boys. A pleasant enough song until midpoint, when Brian (or is it Carl?) sings, “Music, when you’re alone, is like a companion for your lonely soul.” Then he soars. Poultry time, my friends. Pawk, pawk.

“Bugler” by The Byrds. Sung by Clarence White. A boy tells us how his dog, his best friend, died. This reminds me so much of my childhood in Texas … and that old movie, Biscuit Eater. (Don’t get me started on Old Yeller.) When one of our family dogs died, we were not allowed to utter the dead dog’s name again. Dry your eyes and stand up straight — Bugler’s got a place at the pearly gates.

“That Lovin’-You Feelin’ Again” by Emmylou Harris & Roy Orbison. Lord, I’m a mushpot. But I can’t deny that I love this song. What beautiful voices.

“Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan. Yes. Every time I hear it, I’m slayed. I’ve never been able to hear this without turning it up. I especially like it as the song roars toward the conclusion and Dylan makes that sound, as if he can’t himself believe what he’s in the middle of doing. Fucking awesome. Every time I hear it.

Clarence Carter

“Making Love (at the Dark End of the Street)” by Clarence Carter. He used only one verse from the original “Dark End of the Street” and spends the first part of the song preaching about cattle copulating. Never have I heard the ridiculous and sublime so well married in a song. After talking about mosquitos fucking, he manages to achieve some kind of majesty at the end of the song. Chills. And marvel: how did he do that?

“Hello in There” by John Prine. Thinking about my late grandparents. Prine’s whole body of work is chicken skin music. Sometimes, his songs are so good that I can’t listen to them. I’m afraid I’d collapse. On The Tree of Forgiveness (2018), his last album, there’s a song called “Summer’s End.” It destroys me. From beginning to end, John Prine had it.

“2000 Miles” by the Pretenders. The way Chrissie Hyde’s voice rises as she sings “it must be Christmastime.” I have a firm tactile memory of this song — driving cross-country through a blizzard to see my children. I always associate this and Dylan’s Infidels and Emmylou’s Wrecking Ball as cold-weather albums.

Carlene Carter

“Me and the Wildwood Rose” by Carlene Carter. The best and most autobiographical song on an album dealing with her considerable family legacy. The last verse moves one to tears. Great storytelling. If you loved a grandparent, you’ll understand.

“The Lakes of Ponchatrain” by Trapezoid. Feel free to assassinate me while this song is playing. It’s so beautiful, I won’t mind. Really. The dulcimer solo carries home this song of doomed and impossible love.

“Mama Tried” by the Everly Brothers. On the great Roots album, this follows a snippet from an Everly Family radio broadcast when Don and Phil were in single digits. That moment, when the broadcast ends and the opening of this Merle Haggard cover begins, is one of many high points on that great album. Also: a slow remake of their early song, “I Wonder if I Care as Much.” Sorry, Merle, this is the odd moment when a cover version beats your original — but just by a badger hair.

The Beatles

“Hey Jude” by the Beatles. My favorite Beatle song, especially for the fade – and for the time and place where that song came in my / our history. This song is so connected to that tumultuous, overwhelming year, 1968.

Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys. The whole thing. A cop-out, I know, but when I hear “Wouldn’t it be Nice” — especially the fade –- “Sloop John B,” “God Only Knows” and the rest of it, I’m both exhilarated by the beauty of the music and saddened that the world is without the angelic voice of Carl Wilson. Carl could even take a weak song – Mike Love’s “Brian is Back” comes to mind – and turn it into a thing of beauty. When I hear them fading away at the end of “Wouldn’t it Be Nice,” they truly are forever young.

“Spanish is the Loving Tongue” by Michael Martin Murphey. The singing and playing is beautiful and the song even manages to overcome one verse that is spoken, not sung. I’m a mushpot, so this one always gets to me. You know who you are.

“Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen. Sorry to be so obvious. This is the best Phil Spector record that Spector never made. Phil would have crammed this whole world into a shorter record. Too bad how it ended with Phil. I’d like to see his remix of this. I bet he’d bring it in under three minutes. It would be a tight, claustrophobic record.

“Blind Willie McTell” by Bob  Dylan. Hypnotic. Masterful. This song never fails to get to me. Wonderful use of language and image. And to think – it was an outtake. “Lord, Protect My Child” is another beautiful Infidels outtake.

“Highwater (for Charley Patton)” by Bob Dylan. One last Bob song. This is of a piece with “Series of Dreams” and “Blind Willie McTell.” This is Dylan’s whole history of the doom and dread of the 20th Century. I’m utterly drained after every listen.

Marvin Gaye

What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye. The whole thing. When I got the original LP, I thought, “This album is so great that if there isn’t a Side 2, I’d still be happy with it.” That suite on Side 1 is so beautiful, especially when Gaye preaches and begs us to save the babies! save the babies!

I can’t type anymore.

Chills, dude, chills.

Posted on

Over a Cheever

I was at a tender and impressionable age when I discovered the short stories of Flannery O’Connor and John Cheever. They were life-changing.I was introduced to O’Connor by my mentor, Starkey Flythe.

John Cheever’s grave in Norwell, Massachusetts. It’s adjacent to the parking lot for a place called Cheever Tavern.

Starkey was Georgian and Southern Gothic, so that was a natural development of his preaching to me.

I often refer to working with Starkey as my graduate school. He was a lovely man and the world is poorer without him.

Here is a short film of Starkey reading one of his poems. It’s a beautiful piece of work.

I read O’Connor’s Complete Stories in one long inhale. With my friend, Harry Allen, we conversed as if we were characters in her story “Greenleaf.” She gave us a new language. She was a wonderful writer.

Oddly, her novels didn’t move me the way her short stories did.

Not sure how I came to John Cheever, but Starkey was probably the culprit.

Cheever wrote of a different world — the New York suburban life of highballs and infidelities. I again inhaled his collected stories (The Stories of John Cheever) in one gulp.

Decades later, I read the massive book straight through again. When I moved to Massachusetts, I was amused that I settled near Braintree and Quincy, Cheever’s old stomping grounds.

Flannery O’Connor

I have a friend who coaches the tennis team at Thayer Academy, the school that expelled Cheever.

I’ve been in a Cheever mood recently and discovered that I’m working one street over from Cheever’s apartment on Bay State Road.

He taught at Boston University for a while. Then, curious about his burial, I discovered he is in the First Parish Cemetery in Norwell. It’s right across the street from where son Charley works as a food runner. (The Tinker’s Son — frosty libations and swell vittles.)

So I played hooky from grading yesterday and found his grave. It’s a few feet away from the parking lot for a restaurant called Cheever Tavern.

There it was. This great writer’s grave is next to a parking lot. He’s buried next to his wife, Mary, and his son, Federico. Federico was a celebrated professor of law. He died while kayaking in 2017.

There is no great meaning or burning epiphany to report, but finding Cheever’s grave was deeply moving.

The Tavern wasn’t open, but I go by the place a couple of times a week, so I’ll drop in for a Scotch in honor of those two masterful storytellers.

John Cheever in the 1970s. He spent a couple of deeply unhappy terms teaching at Boston University before his career revived with Falconer and The Stories of John Cheever.

Cheever Tavern looks spiffy, and the menu might be too rich for my blood.

There is no entrance on the main street.

The tavern is behind a convenience store and a coffee shop, and you have to drive around back to find the joint.

I’ll let you know what it’s like, assuming the maitre’d doesn’t kick me out for being a lowlife.