Cultural Sponge - The Joe Pagetta Blog

Everyone is connected in Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin, one of the most beautiful contemporary novels I’ve read in years.  But characters aren’t connected in the way that, say, they are in the film Crash. Yes, they cross paths, but it’s art  –  a man walking, dancing and even bouncing on a tightrope suspended between the Twin Towers — that is the backdrop for all their lives.  Using Phillipe Petite’s iconic walk on August 7, 1974, McCann tells us the fictional stories of a myriad of New Yorkers — natives and immigrants, blacks and whites, men and woman, established and on the fringe.  It takes place in a Big Apple of a different era, when taking the subway two more stops could drop you off in a completely different world.  And like the Towers’ role in the excellent documentary of Petit’s walk, Man on a Wire, they are a characters here too, though not in a nostalgic way.  As one reviewer wrote of Let The Great World Spin, the best 9/11 novel takes place more than 25 years before it happened.

I think what’s so masterful about the novel, and what moves me the most, is that each character, like the funambulist based on Petit, steps out on to their own tightrope. Whether it’s the Irish immigrant Corrigan, a monk of the order of the Franciscans who ministers to prostitutes in the Bronx, or his brother who can’t help but be inspired by Corrigan’s selflessness and what seems at times like blind faith, or the group of mothers from different backgrounds who gather to mourn the sons they’ve lost in Vietnam. The characters in Let the Great World Spin are creating a kind of performance art of their own. Fittingly, it’s an artist who feels responsible for the death of Corrigan and a young prostitute that takes a risk by going back, and finds redemption in both herself and Corrigan’s brother.

With each move these characters make — the simple offering of ride to an unfamiliar neighborhood; the major leap of adopting orphaned children; the dragging of a young girl into a life of prostitution by a mother who knows no other option — is a step on the tightrope, a bounce on the wire,  a dance with destiny. But unlike Petit, sometimes the walker don’t make it back from the wire to the ledge. That is the risk they take, and that, I think, is what the tightrope walk that shadows everyone in the novel represents, the risks we all take, every day, to love, to live and to connect, and make art out of our lives.

The woman of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help are risking everything in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. Young, idealistic and gutsy Skeeter Phelan, and the maids (”the help”) she encourages to share their stories of working for white families in the segregated south, could be killed for what they’re doing, and they know it. If Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk between the Towers is the backdrop to the character develop in Let The Great World Spin, it’s the murder of Medgar Evers that looms heavily in the lives of the characters in the The Help. It’s a high wire act of the tallest order, and it’s nerve-wracking, oft-times riveting and extremely entertaining. Work of fiction? Psuedo-memoir? Anthropological study? You be the judge.

I learned about The Help after a conversation with John Seigenthaler, journalist, former administrative assistant to Senator Robert Kennedy, founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center and long time host of A Word on Words on Nashville Public Television. We were talking about the Southern Festival of Books last year, and I asked him if there was anyone he was excited about, and someone I really shouldn’t miss. He said “Kathryn Stockett” without hesitation, and added that The Help was a wonderful book. When a man who risked his own life on the Freedom Rides in the 60s recommends a book dealing with segregation in the south, you listen.  Stockett was great at the Festival, and I quickly picked up a copy, then already in its 30-something printing. Oddly though, for a book that popular, I not only hadn’t heard of it, I didn’t know anyone who read it or was reading it.  Until, that is, I’d mentioned it, especially to women. They either read it, were reading it, were planning on reading it or knew someone who was reading it, like the book was a secret being passed around. Reading it, especially since it seems to be a book being read mostly by women, feels like being granted entrance into an exclusive club, with millions of members.

Being an English major is like being in a secret club without the handshakes and fancy rings. We’re a strange bunch, with strange sensibilities and fixations.  I wonder though, if all these years I’ve been part of the club, I carried some mark of exclusion. How does one be an English Major, and not get around to reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita,  one of the greatest English language novels of all time?  Well, be gone, mark of exclusion!

Like Joyce’s Ulysses, Lolita is a doozy — a big, heavy, monstrous (Humbert Humbert is a monster, after all) work of genius. A single read, just to grasp the narrative, is not enough, so I hope to return to it someday. When I read Ulysses in college, I needed an entire other book to help me get through it. It’s a shame, though, that I don’t read books with that kind of attentiveness anymore. There are too many other books to read, and too much life to live and work to do — and no tests to take. But I imagine this book would become more and more enthralling with deeper study and subsequent readings.

Without that additional attention, though, it’s still unquestionably a masterpiece. Talk about taking risks. The book is fearless. There’s no need for me to mention plot points in a classic, but if all you know of Lolita are watered-down pop-culture references, you’re doing your senses a great disservice. It’s really a road trip novel, through America, through the English language, through storytelling, through wit and humor; through our own fears, wants and desires. Then imagine that road trip turns into a crash course for your sensibilities, testing the limits of what you believe is possible in a work of fiction, and what you’re willing to let the (admittedly unreliable) narrator get away with. I can’t imagine any artist, even a funambulist for that matter, approaching their work the same after reading Lolita.

When I was 18 years-old and in my first band, I’d often find myself up late at night, confused and desperate, and although I didn’t know it at the time, depressed. Different thoughts would keep me up, and if reading or listening to music didn’t help me through the night, I’d write. Songs, poems, thoughts.

On one particular night, my depression had a rare side-effect: a call to action. A way out. I would write a letter to a local music reporter and tell her about my band. It was a rash decision, done without much thought. I figured if I could tell someone about me, and about my band, I could break free. Of what, exactly, I wasn’t sure. Maybe my bedroom. Maybe myself.

We were a good band that worked hard. We practiced five nights a week, played a lot of local shows, and took ourselves more seriously than 18 year-olds ever should. We had a live demo that kicked ass and was surely better than anything coming out of Hudson County in those days. Better yet, at the beginning of the 1990’s, Horror Time was easily the best band in northeast New Jersey. We knew it. The only problem was that no one else did. Know one knew we even existed. That meant, of course, that no one knew I existed.

So, late on this night, I sat down and wrote Cathie Coleman at the East Coast Rocker a long drawn-out letter introducing myself and my band and explaining how we could really use some press. It was that simple. We weren’t getting anywhere and weren’t really sure where we were trying to go. We didn’t fit in with Bon Jovi or Skid Row or God forbid, any of the hair metal bands popular on the radio and in the area. We weren’t heavy enough to run with the hardcore bands selling out matinees in New York or speaking for the angst of the kids in the suburbs of New Jersey. But then again, we weren’t just a Jersey rock band like the E Street Band or the Asbury Jukes, either. We kind of thought of ourselves as a thing and style all our own. We were an attitude and a philosophy. Four 18-year-old kids (three Italian-Americans and one Eastern Indian-American) on a mission to take over the world with six-to-seven minute songs (at least!) and a heavy dose of influence from the likes of the Misfits, the Ramones, the Gorilla Biscuits, Supertouch, Vision, Metallica and early U2. A strange mix of bands you’ve heard of and some you haven’t. You were going to hear about us.

First, we had to get out of Jersey City.

I took our live demo, my letter, a bio a friend had written, and a grainy photo taken by that same friend, and put it in a golden padded envelope. The next morning, I walked the ten or so blocks up to the post office on Central Ave near Grand Street.

I didn’t know anything about follow-up calls, so I wouldn’t be sure if Cathie Coleman ever got the package. There was no e-mail to do a follow-up e-mail, and no internet, where I might have been able to check the magazine’s web site. I would just have to pick up the East Coast Rocker every Thursday and see if we were in there.

My hopes weren’t high, because as far as I knew, bands didn’t get written about because band members wrote letters to music writers. There was some mystery involved in the whole process, I was sure. I used to make frequent trips up to Garden State News on the corner of Bauer Street and Central Avenue, not far from the post office, to pick up copies of Creem and Hit Parader. All the bands; all the stories. The magazines must have just known about these people and sought them out for interviews and features. When you’re great, I figured, magazines knew who you were.

In the weeks that followed my gutsy mailing maneuver, it was back to the routine. School, work, late night band practice, and fighting depression in my bedroom on the appropriately named Booraem (pronounced bore-em) Avenue in Jersey City Heights.

It was a dark bedroom. Enclosed by dusty gray paneling and anchored by forest-green wall-to-wall carpeting, it had one window that faced the alleyway between our house and Angelo and Hazel’s house next door. No natural light filtered into the room. What did, however, enter the room, was the occasional smell of cat urine that wafted over from Angelo and Hazel’s, who shared their house with at least 17 cats. Exactly how many cats they had was hard to calculate. Your best shot was to keep track of which ones were sitting in their front window and make a mental note of which ones you hadn’t seen before.

The bedroom held an additional darkness as well. I moved into it about a year earlier, after my family had moved from the second floor apartment of the house to the first floor apartment. The first floor was most recently occupied by my grandmother, and before that, by both my grandmother and grandfather, and before that by my grandmother, grandfather, my mother, and her two brothers, Joe and Vinnie. There was a lot of history in that apartment. My grandmother had been living in the apartment by herself for the last nine years, after the death of my grandfather in December of 1980, ten days after John Lennon was shot and killed by an obsessed fan outside the Dakota in Manhattan, just across the Hudson River from where we lived. When my grandmother succumbed to brain cancer in 1989, it was after only a few days of her being placed in a nursing home. For the many months before that, she’d laid in a hospital bed that had been placed in her living room. My mother, with the occasional help from me and my sister Mary and brother Nick, cared for her, emptying her bed pan, rolling her over to prevent bed sores, and giving her sponge baths. After her death, my parents decided it was best for us to move down to the first floor and rent out the second. My parents took the master bedroom, Mary took my Uncle Vinnie’s old room closest to the kitchen, and I took my Uncle Joe’s old room off the living room, the same living room my grandmother had floated toward death in only months before. Nick took the basement as his room, which meant the rest of us lost unrestricted access to it. We now needed his approval to wash our clothes.

It took a little over a month of trips to the newsstand on Central Avenue before I finally found out if Cathie Coleman ever got my letter and package. She did. There in her “New Jersey Newsbeat” column was Horror Time, looking tougher and more rock ‘n’ roll then we’d ever looked. We were the second item. She wrote a few paragraphs about us, telling folks that we were a band to look out for. She even quoted a few lines from our bio, and made a point to mention how young we were, even referring to us as a “baby band” in line with early 90s hitmakers, and coincidentally Jersey-based, Trixter.

The band was ecstatic. We were on the map. People knew who Horror Time was. It seemed like everyone saw the article, and for those who didn’t, there was sure to be a copy in each band member’s back pocket if necessary. I realized quickly that press could breed more press. And now that I knew you could be directly responsible for getting your band in the papers, I jumped on the opportunity to get us more. I was able to garner listings mentions, reviews and show previews in some of the other local newspapers, like the Jersey Journal and The Hudson Current. When Horror Time put out its first proper demo, I sent Cathie Coleman a copy and she wrote about us in her column again, and this time, we were the lead item.

One of the things I remember most about that time were many of the band’s friends and contemporaries asking us, “How’d you get that?” when reading stories about us. My answer was always the same: “I sent them some stuff.”

I realized that most people thought getting press was as mysterious as I once did. But now I knew it wasn’t. You had to let the press know about you. In the years that followed, through Horror Time’s demise and the building of my own singer-songwriter career, I gathered a decent collection of press clippings about my music in both regional and national publications. I learned how to write a professional press release and bio, how to write cover letters, and how to get professional promo photos taken. I built press and contact lists, and learned about something I didn’t know existed when I was 18 and in my first band: the follow-up.

I never again wrote a late-night, depression-fueled plea to a music writer to tell him or her about my band, although I sometimes wish I was still innocent enough to think doing so is appropriate.

It wasn’t long after that first bit of press that my family moved from Booraem Ave., forced out by uncles who wouldn’t accept my parents’ offer to buy out their share of my grandmother’s estate. At the same time we were preparing to find another place to live, my mother decided she wanted a divorce from my father after 25-years of marriage. Dealing with the illness and death of my grandmother, and the realization that her two brothers would just as soon as put her out on the street, had taken its toll on her. My father’s gambling and bitterness — something my mother had ridden the wave of their entire marriage — became magnified by the circumstances and grew to an intensity impossible for her to handle. It would break the future like it was breaking her. If there was ever a time to start fresh, that was it.

I couldn’t afford to live on my own at the time, so I popped back and forth. I lived a few months with my mother, then after she got tired of me, a few months with my father. It was a vagabond, pack-light existence, where I frequently slept at my girlfriend’s house, and on one occasion when both of her parents were drunk and vicious, in my car, parked in the covered garage under my father’s apartment building. None of that mattered, though. I was out of that dark and depressing bedroom off the living room. And I was on my way. More shows. More press. More existence outside of myself.

One day, during one of the brief stints I lived with my father on Sherman Avenue in Jersey City, the Jersey Journal sent over a photographer to take a few photos of me. I had won a singer-songwriter competition at the Village Gate in Greenwich Village, and in addition to the fifty dollars I received, I was given a showcase of my own at the club. I tipped the Journal off about the competition and show, and it decided to do a little piece on me, with an accompanying photo. The photographer took a few shots, and the paper ran the one of me sitting with my guitar propped up in front of me — the standard “musician who plays guitar” shot.  But there was another photo taken, that the photographer gave me later, which I’ve always felt captured that time in my life quite accurately. It was me, holding a lit cigarette and standing by the window, looking outside myself and my father’s apartment, toward a world that was beginning to know I existed. I had the photo and the story in the paper to prove it.

In no particular order, and for no particular reason, here are a few of my favorite things from the world of culture in 2009. (Caveat: not a “best of,” mind you, just some stuff I liked.)

(Book) The Song is You - Arthur Phillips: A book about music, passion, relationships and family that felt completely contemporary; completely now; without overtly being about now. A beautiful and unique novel.

(Film) (500) Days of Summer: A fresh, sharp and stylized take on romance that was above all else, fun. I’d watch it again, and again.

(Film/Concert) Anvil: The Story of Anvil / The Anvil Experience at the Belcourt: Easily one of the best documentaries, and maybe movies in general, about rock ‘n’ roll. But then add the band performing after it, and it was truly an amazing experience. My wife on her feet shouting “Metal on Metal” was alone worth the price of admission.

(Concert) Leonard Cohen at TPAC: A dream, really, to see and hear Cohen perform, in what may have been one of the best sounding-concerts I’ve ever been to in a large venue. It was everything I had hoped for, and so much more.

(Film) Prodigal Sons: This film will be rolled out nationally over several months in 2010. Yes, it’s about a transgendered woman going home to be part of her high-school reunion. Yes, it has something to do with Orson Welles.  That’s only the half of it. Ultimately, it’s about love and family, and the lengths we go to, to keep that family intact. Kimberly Reed’s heart is huge.

(Concert) The Non-Commissioned Officers at the Nashville Film Festival Closing Night Party at Mercy Lounge: Though not the official closing-night event (that belonged to the excellent Long Players performance of the “Easy Rider” soundtrack), the Non-Comms performance at Mercy Lounge was triumphant. Make-Out With Violence, the film for which the band composed the music, had won the top prize at the Festival. The soundtrack won the best music-in-a-film prize.  The guys in the band were in the movie. Someone’s mom got up to sing. It was a celebration. It was thrilling.

(Film) Adventureland: As far as major releases go, this one slipped under the radar.  A completely charming coming-of-age vignette worth a viewing, or multiple viewings, if you missed it. Excellent performances all around.

(DVD) The Hold Steady - A Positive Rage: A short documentary packaged with a live-record from a band that made me believe in rock ‘n’ roll again. It’ll make you smile, especially when the band and the audience start fast-clapping.

(Essay/Book) Eating Animals - Jonathan Safran Foer: The first chapter of this book was excerpted in the New York Times Magazine, which I where I first read it. The chapter stands alone as a beautifully-written essay about our relationship to food. The book itself alters that relationship.

(Television) Mad Men Season Three:  While season two moved slower in order to better develop the characters, season three was a roller-coaster ride. The final episode made it worth the trip. I’ve had a theory that the majority of us are either Don or Betty. This season moved me closer to a better understanding of my own theory.

(Television) Masterpiece Mystery / Wallander: A gorgeously-shot series based on the Henning Mankell novels that was so well done, you could easily get lost in the photography and forget anyone was killed. Kenneth Branagh was brilliant as the down-and-out lead character.

(Concert) Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Sommet Center: What can I say? I’m certain the Boss and the Band are only getting better. This may have been the swan song for the E Street Band on tour. They played Born to Run in its entirety.  I wanted to come out of my skin. It was transcendent.

(Film) Food Inc.: If you eat food, or know someone who eats foods, or are responsible for the food that someone else eats, this is a must-see-film.

(Songs): “”Give Me Tomorrow,” Willie Nile; “Wilco (The Song),” Wilco; “Hysteric,” The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “I and Love and You,” The Avett Brothers; “Queen of the Supermarket,” Bruce Springsteen, “The Fixer,” Pearl Jam; “Haven’t Met You Yet,” Michael Buble*.

*I feel I need to clarify this last one a little, because it seems a little not like the others. I was in Italy in the Fall on vacation, and this song was everywhere, so I think I associate it with a wonderful memory. But it’s also a perfect slice of pop songwriting and production, with pessimism giving way to optimism in the lyrics, the indiscriminate use of the word “kid,” and a trumphet solo — a friggin’ trumphet solo! — in the middle. How can that be bad?

Bonus - (Book) Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann: Although, as of this posting, I haven’t finished Let the Great World Spin, I’m almost certain I’ll have it read by the end of the year. I’m also almost certain, based on what I HAVE read, that it will be one of my favorite things of the year, and maybe the decade.

Drive by your house

Walk down your street

Write you a letter

Call out to you

Run to you

Send a song out to you

Put a dime, quarter or dollar in the jukebox (and then lean up against it)

Go to, or climb through, your window

More elaborate things we never really did when courting you, but still sometimes do in song:

Climb your mountain

Swim your sea

Put a spell on you, or fall under YOUR spell

Take you by the hand, and make you understand, Amanda.

Things we ultimately still want to do, but only certain people can actually do, and that’s why there is song:

Liberate you

Confiscate you

Be your man

There’s much to think about after reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s excellent new book, Eating Animals. More than a work of advocacy, it reads as an honest exploration into the dilemma of eating meat that the author promises from the very beginning. We’re left to weigh the new knowledge we’ve gained against the knowledge we kind of knew was already there.  Perhaps I should say “I” instead of “we.” You see, I know where Foer is coming from. I may not have a child, but since my college days, my relationship to eating meat has been alternately tenuous and voracious, but never indifferent.  There was always a part of me a little unsure as to whether or not I should be thinking about the meat I was eating. If the part about “should be thinking about” sounds convoluted, well it is. Again, never indifferent. I went a full year in my 20s not eating meat at all. And it wasn’t that hard, especially if you continue to eat fish or animal products like eggs, milk and cheese. Since that time, I’ve sometimes avoided it and sometimes sought it out – quests for perfect BBQ in the south can turn into ritual. As someone who enjoys cooking, I’ve breaded it, grilled it, marinated it and served it up. I eventually found a position I considerable agreeable: “conscientious omnivore.” For the most part, when dining out and I had an option, I chose a non-meat, or sometimes fish option.  I avoided fast food restaurants all together. At home, rarely meat, sometimes fish, mostly neither. When dining at the homes of family or friends, I ate what was offered.

After reading Eating Animals, I’m not sure that this position is agreeable anymore.

Foer gracefully points out, though, that eating isn’t simply about what you put in your mouth. Eating is about family and culture.  It’s about the smells of childhood, and memories of family dinners. While steak was a rarity in my house growing up, my mother’s meatballs were the best (and I see fellow Italian-American men nodding in agreement about their own mother’s meatballs).  I used to help my father roll small meatballs to toss into his escarole and bean soup. Now that I think about it, my mother’s meatloaf was ostensibly one very large brick-shaped meatball. And I remember once when my grandfather – perplexed that I wanted a hamburger – made a very large meatball and smashed it into a paddy. “THIS, is how you make a hamburger!” he said. He was right. It was the greatest hamburger I had ever eaten, and a favorite story I’ve told dozens of times. But we didn’t just eat variations of meatballs, of course. My mother would often bread chicken or pork cutlets, or throw some pork or sausage in with the sauce (or gravy if you’re from the Northeast).

As someone who now carries on the Italian-American cooking traditions I learned as a kid, I’m grateful that deciding to become a vegetarian would be easier than if I came from a different tradition. But it would still be difficult. Eggplant dishes, broccoli rabe, stuffed mushrooms, any number of pasta dishes, etc. are not a problem. Switching to vegetable broth for tortellini soup wouldn’t be a big change, but what to do about the pancetta, or bacon, in my beloved – and admittedly famous – pasta e fagiole? And if there’s any meat I do get a craving for, it’s the cold sliced kind that I spent my teen years piling up on sandwiches when I worked at the deli in my neighborhood. I love my prosciutto, and mortadella, and capicola and sopressata. As far as animal products go, my mozzarella, and ricotta and provolone. This stuff is more than meat or animal products; they are my connection to my father and grandfather; to my ancestry.

So is there a middle ground?  Does knowing the sopressata I’m eating comes from a pig that was not factory farmed make it less objectionable to me? I don’t know for sure, but maybe a little. What’s impossible to know is if it did indeed NOT come from a factory farm. Odds are, especially if you’re eating poultry, then pork, then beef, that it did. Are you a betting man?

What I do know, is that Eating Animals has raised the conversation to a new level for me. It’s a conversation that started almost 20 years ago, was put on the backburner, and in recent years, brought up again with the watching of “Food, Inc. and the reading of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Foer is the first one to add to the discussion the aspects of culture and family, and in section 4 of the “Storytelling” chapter, turn that discussion into poetry.  The middle of the book is heavy, and that’s what makes it extraordinary.  He sets it up beautifully, tells you where he’s going to go with it, and then takes you out eloquently. The writing alone in the last section is worth the barrage of facts and horror that come at you through the middle.

I’ve written before in blog posts about the risks one takes when entering a movie theatre, going to a concert or opening up a book. There’s a chance you’ll see something, or experience something or read something that may alter you in small way, challenge your way of thinking, even change everything. I’ve always liked that. When opening Eating Animals, you know what you’re getting into it – none of what Foer writes should surprise you – but you’re not sure how it’s going to affect you. To put yourself in that vulnerable position is a good thing. Most people, I imagine, don’t want to, especially when it comes to the subject of eating meat. That alone says something.

But if anything, just imagine, as Foer writes, “what kind of world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we sat down to eat…”

# # #

Summer reading is a ritual for me, especially for that week in June or July every year that my wife and I vacation on the beach. I always have a “to-read” pile going, but in the weeks leading up to the vacation, a separate “to-read on the beach” pile emerges. These books are rarely what you’d call “beach reads,” but serious literary fiction I look forward to spending quality time with. I have a special relationship to these books, because the way they are read, intently and without the distraction of the day-to-day, burns them more deeply into my conscious. In previous years, those “beach reads” have included The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham, The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway and Keith Katchik’s work of Buddhist fiction, The Hungry Ghost. All had a profound affect on me when I read them.

This year, of the half dozen books I brought with me to the beach, I chose two to spend the week with: Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland and Arthur Phillips’ The Song is You. Let me say first that reading books that take place in New York City (even in the past, as Pete Hammill’s North River, which I also read last year, does) is bittersweet for me. I still love New York, where I spent so much of my life before moving to Nashville in 1998. Being taken back there in fiction, to walk the streets and see the sights and hear the sounds, is both sad and wonderful. But my life is in Nashville now, and I’ve accepted that.

Both Netherland and The Song is You take place in New York. September 11, 2001 looms heavily in Netherland (it’s been called a post-9/11 novel), but it’s there too in Phillips’ novel, just not as overtly. That they both take place in a post-9/11 New York is no big deal. Plenty of books do. Besides, as one critic pointed out, isn’t all fiction published after September 11, 2001 post 9/11? What’s weird is that I inadvertently chose to read two books with protagonists who are estranged from wives named Rachel. Coincidence?

The obvious similarities end there. To draw more parallels would be pushing it, but if pressed, I would say that they both have protagonists trying to recapture something they once had before they can ever reconcile with their respective Rachels. For Netherland’s Hans van de Brock, it’s his youthful days as a cricket player. For The Song is You’s Julian Donahue, it’s a hipper, younger, passionate version of himself. Both of them find their muse in people with big dreams.  For Hans, it’s Chuck Ramkissoon, a hustler whose lust for life is so engaging and insatiable, and whose dream of building a world class cricket stadium in New York City so inspiring, that our protagonist is blinded — as are we — to that fact that Chuck may only be a hustler and gangster.  Their relationship most closely resembles that of Nick Carraway’s enamoring of Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and O’Neill means for us to see it that way. In one poignant scene, Chuck carelessly stands in a cemetery on a gravestone engraved with the word “DAISY.” If you hadn’t figured out by then what the book was aspiring to,  it couldn’t have been made clearer.  I wasn’t sure what to make of it though. Was it merely an homage to Fitzgerald’s Great American Novel, like playing a Sinatra song if you’re gigging in Hoboken? If you dare to tread into that territory, must you give a nod to the greats that came before you? Or did it have some more prescient meaning regarding the American dream?

I love The Great Gatsby. It’s one of my favorite novels and one I reread every couple of years. It takes guts to tackle the Great American Novel, and even more guts to model it after Gatsby. Fitzgerald knew what he was doing, and so does O’Neill. The result is a beautifully written and exhilarating novel that paints New York in an entirely new, and very likely, more honest way. It’s New York through its new immigrants eyes; the price of the American Dream reconsidered. Post-9/11 or not, if Netherland is not The Great American Novel, it’s definitely a Great Novel about a new America.

For The Song is You’s Julian, his muse is a young Irish singer-songwriter named Cait O’Dwyer. An emerging artist who has just signed a major record deal, Julian catches Cait on the way up, at local club shows growing increasing crowded as her fame spreads. He’s immediately taken with her, both physically and spiritually. What ensues is a kind of cat-and-mouse love affair, where one moment you’re rooting for them, the next you’re worried that your own emotions have blinded you to the fact that Julian may be a crazed stalker. This is especially true when some signs Julian believes come from Cait — and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here — actually come from his wife Rachel.

Where The Song is You truly shines is in its depiction of how we age in a modern world. What happens when we get older, and are no longer the hip, cool, with-it people we once were. What does the iPod library full of music that came out twenty years ago say about us? Do we, and should we, reinvent ourselves? Does music still matter? Or rather, does what matters to us about music, matter to anyone else?

Even though I’ve been in rock bands, and have played music for a good part of my life, I don’t like rock and roll fiction. Except for maybe Tom Perrotta’s The Wishbones, most of it tries too hard to be authentic. But Phillips has the ear for it, and never falls into the bad rock and roll fiction trap, delivering a heartfelt narrative on the power and pleasures of writing and playing rock and roll. In the process, he makes a pretty good case for listening to it as well, especially on an iPod.

So how to appreciate music, in a passionate way, and still age gracefully? That’s up to you, but putting some music from bands and artists younger than you on your iPod is a good start. Just don’t fall in love with them.

While leaving us guessing and often breathless chasing a love affair not meant to be, Phillips also gives us a lovely meditation on family, whether it’s his relationship with his father, his brother, or his estranged wife.  Clearly, it was Julian’s father’s love of Billie Holiday that instilled in his son a love for music.  And it’s a book such as Phillips’ that reminds me why I love reading and why it’s so rewarding. It’s a fantastic and very contemporary novel.

Special kudos also to Phillips, a real life former Jeopardy champion, for giving us in his brother the most shockingly hilarious scenario for a disgraced fictional Jeopardy champion. That part I’m definitely not spoiling. You just have to read it and come upon it yourself.

# # #

I came home from vacation yesterday to a pile of junk mail, bills, magazines and, in an envelope that could have easily been mistaken for a subscription renewal request, a letter from Performing Songwriter magazine editor Lydia Hutchinson. After 16 years, the magazine is ceasing publication.

The end of the magazine isn’t a complete surprise. The issues had been getting frighteningly thin as of late, and while more people than ever may be making music, the industry within which that music goes from art to business is collapsing.  On top of that, print publications are folding as advertising money dries up and readers head to the web for information.  All things considered, it’s amazing the magazine lasted as long as it did.

But I’m not writing to lament its death. Things, and times, change. Rather, I feel the need to offer a quick eulogy for the magazine and the stellar and inspiring work that Lydia and her staff did over the last decade and half.

I became a singer songwriter in the early-to-mid 90s. Before that, I was merely a singer, guitar player and songwriter in a rock band in New Jersey.  Performing Songwriter magazine began publishing soon after I started taking songwriting — and performing — truly seriously. It was there that I read about, and discovered, many of the artists I came to admire at that time in my life.  There were the Bob Dylans and Bruce Springsteens and Cat Stevens and Leonard Cohens to admire, of course, but I needed something a little more tangible to guide me.  Performing Songwriter brought me John Gorka and Cliff Eberhardt. I learned about Dar Williams and Richard Shindell and Pierce Pettis. There was a contemporary folk resurgence in the Northeast, and Performing Songwriter gave these artists some serious ink. They were not superstars, but I didn’t want to be superstar. To write like Gorka, or play guitar like Eberhardt, was no short order, and enough to aspire to.  In Performing Songwriter, I learned not only what kind of guitar (and capo!) the current crop of contemporary folk artists were using, but also where their inspiration came from and how they developed their performing style. I learned, most importantly, that there was something called a “performing songwriter.” It carried a bit more weight than “singer songwriter.” It sounded more active. It was something I could identify with.

The magazine had its critics in the early years, who suggested that it focused too heavily on the kind of aforementioned contemporary folk songwriters, and didn’t cover other genres like rock and R&B. Was Prince, technically, not also a performing songwriter? Or Paul Westerberg? Haven’t we heard enough about Ani DiFranco? The criticism may have been justified, but I think the magazine quickly made amends, and gave us years of engaging interviews and profiles with artists of all genres. The gear reviews and advice columns were indispensable.

The magazine also included a  DIY section, where it reviewed releases by independent artists. For any indie performing songwriter with a self-released CD, it was the place to be, not because it helped your career in any tangible way — I know several artists who claimed no jumped in CD sales, not even one disc, as a result of the review — but because it was a review written by your peers and read by your peers.  It was a nice badge of honor, and looked great in your press kit and on your web site.  For me, it took four releases before I finally got my review. My EP Other People’s News was reviewed in January 2008. It felt great (even if Don Henley was on the cover). Nothing much happened after that. But I had finally gotten my PS review.

I was a subscriber on and off over the life of the magazine, and after lapsing for several years, recently subscribed again, hoping a reminder in my mailbox every month might resuscitate the lapsed performing songwriter in me. I’ll have to find that jump-start elsewhere. And that’s as it should be. A magazine isn’t going to get me to pick up my guitar any more than it’s going to get me to ride my bike more. But it does create a sense of community, and a feeling that there are others like you, doing a similar thing, who might be reading the same thing and looking for that same inspiration.

“One of my friends said that Performing Songwriter has never been just a magazine. It’s the community that formed around it and supported it, and it just wore the clothes of a publication,” writes Lydia in her letter. “The community is still there, steadfast and strong; it’s simply time to change clothes. I don’t know exactly what the outfit’s going to look like, but that wonder is part of the joy.”

I agree. Who’s ready to go shopping?

As the Italians say, “allora.” Congratulations Lydia, and the PS staff, on what you accomplished over the last 16 years. And thank you, for the inspiration, identity and community. Oh, and the review.

It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust by Elizabeth Bettina

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’m not the kind of person who can talk to just anyone. I make friends fairly easy, but in a crowded room where I don’t know anyone, I’m more likely to grab a drink, open a book, and keep to myself (which is why the idea of “networking lunches” at conferences makes me nauseous). It’s not that I don’t like people. I do. And I genuinely enjoy talking and getting to know them and making connections. I’m just not very comfortable forcing it. I’m better at it when it happens naturally — or naturally for me at least. I’m also a little sluggish on acting on some of the things I consider doing. I’m not afraid to jump in and get on with it, but I sometimes lack a little motivation on the front end. Which is what makes Elizabeth Bettina’s new work of non-fiction cum memoir, It Happened in Italy, so fascinating.

In a book that purports to tell the “Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust,” as its subtitle suggests, Bettina really tells us the story of how she gathered the stories, and how valuable it is to make connections. It’s as much about her as it is the Jewish people who survived World War II by being interned in concentration camps in Italy. And while at first it’s a little off-putting, even mildly-irritating, it soon becomes exhilarating and inspiring, and even refreshing in the manner in which it tells us these stories.

Imagine a story told something like this:

“Oh My God, so I look at the picture and I say to myself, ‘what’s a rabbi doing in this picture,’ and I call my friend and I tell him he has to sit down, and I’m thinking I’m just a nice Italian girl from new york who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and then there’s the pope and the cabs and the mayor is wearing a Miss America sash and, can you believe, they went for ice cream? No one went for ice cream in Auschwitz or Dachau. And there’s a synagogue and they’re playing soccer and the Italian police shrug and we get some espresso and Oh My God, I couldn’t believe it, I’m on a plane to Nashville and the guy’s mother was in Campagna and she lives in Queens and it’s in my neighborhood and there’s an accordion player and the guy at the Vatican does a hand motion and we walk past the Swiss guards and oh my God, imagine my surprise….”

I’m over-simplifying of course, but you get the idea. Bettina’s story reads like she’s sitting across from me and we’re sharing a bottle of wine and every time she gets to a photo in her story, she just happens to have the photo with her and pulls it out of a bag to show me. It’s a conversational way to tell a story, and while nothing can truly overshadow the amazing stories of the survivors that she pulls together, the narrative device — delivering them in the voices of the survivors as she discovers them — works.

What we get is not only the inspiring stories of people who survived the horrors of the Holocaust, and the courageous stories of those who risked their lives to save others — namely Giovanni Palatucci — but we also get an inspiring story of someone who decided she was going to do something, and did it. When Bettina first came across that picture of a rabbi on the steps of the Church of San Bartolemeo in Campagna, Italy and soon learned of the thousands of Jews interned in dozens of Campo di Concentramento in Campagna and throughout Italy who survived simply as a result of being interned in these camps, she knew immediately she had to tell their story. Why? As Dachau liberator Jimmy Gentry tells her, “it is a story of goodness amidst evil. You must tell this story. If you don’t, who will?.”

So I thank Bettina for not only telling the story of Giovanni Palatucci, and the thousands of “other Palatuccis” (as the book jacket summary tells us) that sheltered and helped Jews throughout Italy. As a first generation Italian-American, it’s a proud reminder of the true nature of my descendants. I thank her also for telling her story. So many times I find myself inspired and moved, and decide that something must be done or a story must told, and I do not follow through. It Happened in Italy is a reminder of what we can accomplish when we do, and why we must.

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I was given a wonderful book for my birthday last week by my dear friends Pouria and Jenna Montazeri. Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition, translated by David and Sabrineh Fideler,  is “a comprehensive Collection of Sufi poems  by Rumi, Hafiz, and many others.”

Finding myself unable to sleep tonight, as is often the case in the weeks leading up to the Nashville Film Festival, I decided to take some of the book’s poems in, and was immediately impacted by their simplicity, beauty and timelessness.

The third poem in the book is the great Rumi’s poem “The Same Language,” with its wonderful line:

The universal language is authentic insight.

To be one in heart is surely superior
to only speaking the same words.

I wish I had that poem several months ago when Nashville was in the throes of an “English-only” debate, but that would have only wrongly commandeered a poem that speaks of so much more. It’s just as appropriate in the confines of the home as it is within the Turkish border.

I realize quickly these are not poems to be paged through quickly, but savored slowly.  A few pages later, I’m slowed to a crawl by the Hafiz poem, “The Glow of Your Presence.” It’s a short one, so I hope David and Sabrineh Fideler don’t mind me quoting it in its entirety.

Where have you taken your sweet song?
Come back and play me a tune.

I never really cared for the things of the world.
It was the glow of your presence
that filled it with beauty.

It’s how I’ve always felt about the music I create, and expresses the words I’ve been searching for to explain where that music has gone for the last couple of years. I really haven’t truly written and performed for a couple of years now. Perhaps this is my new prayer.

So when it’s late at night, and you’re reading poetry, and you come across something like that, what do you do? You need to tell somebody, and there’s no one to call. So you post a blog, which among its many uses, is still good for doing what it did originally — providing a place to share your thoughts.

The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
What a find! In need of a literary diversion, I picked this up at a bookstore in Atlanta simply because it seemed quirky enough. It’s fantastic. It may be a book about obituaries and obituary writers, but it’s more a book about celebrating life and great writing. The obituary section is now often the first section of the paper I turn to, and I read them with a new appreciation. Highly recommended, especially these days when the longevity of newspapers is in jeopardy, and the economy has us looking inward at the way we’re living our lives.

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