Almost a month after the last storm, and the snow is still piled so high on street corners that I can’t wait for the bus on the sidewalk, and have to stand out n the intersection – not on the busy streets, Center and 42nd, but on the side streets, 114th and Pierce. The bus lights seem brighter lately; maybe they have new buses, or maybe I’m just happy to see them coming.
On the bus, I really got into Occupational Hazards for a while. It’s by Jonathan Segura, about whom I can find no detailed biographical information, but who evidently spent a good deal of time in Omaha. Don’t misunderstand – the book is repulsive and clichéd. What kept me going was the setting – Omaha – and the plot centered around real events dressed up a bit.
The real events are the renovation of an area near downtown, which happened around 2002 or so; and the Franklin Credit Union scandal, which came to a head around 1988.
The book is repulsive because of its inability to fashion a paragraph without the F word. It’s cliched because the next two most frequently used words are “cigarette” and “grease”: every place the “hero goes has to be dirty, the food he eats has to be greasy, the people he hangs with have to be scamming something. Get it? It's noir! Segura's read Dash Hammet and Raymond Chandler, but doesn't understand them. On second thought, maybe he just read synopses -- is there a Cliff Notes for The Maltese Falcon? The masochism (I assume his hero is fulfilling some fantasy of the author) builds and bills to a truly disgusting climax, and then the hero is saved by a deus ex -- literal -- machina.
And Segura should have spent a dime to rent The Incredibles, for a lesson on bad-guy-monologues. It is especially hackneyed when they bad guys kill everyone who crosses them, until the hero comes along – the one who can do them the most damage – and they keep him alive. Sure.
I applaud the attempt to dig out interest in the Franklin cover-up, but I wish it had been done by someone who can write a good story.
Sad to say, but Occupational Hazards is terrible.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing
Body and Soul by Frank Conroy
“Body and Soul” is a jazz standard and more – it’s a requirement for, at least, anyone who aspires to play sax in a jazz band. From what I’m told, “Body and Soul” is as basic and routine as a scale. If you can play the sax, you have played “Body and Soul”.
So it’s an important thing.
The book, Body and Soul, is about a musician: not a jazz musician, though he dabbles and likes to listen to jazz. And at no time are the words “body and soul” used in the book, except in the title. Go figure.
I guess there is an implication of “Body and Soul”, because this is a musician’s book, and I can’t imagine anyone not a musician getting caught up in the plot. And not just a casual musician, like me, but an accomplished musician, a student of music. Many of the conflicts, the sources of much of the tension, arise from situations the lay person couldn’t possibly relate to:
“Five or six bars in, Fredericks said, ‘Wait. Stop. Let me here is not legato. See if you can play it non legato’. Claude thought about it for a minute and began again, concentrating on the value of the notes . . .” (Chapter 6)
(On Charles Ives) “I guess it was a question of whether it’s a synthesis, a kind of prophetic use of dissonance as the only way to pull all the themes together and rise above them, or whether he’s thumbing his nose at us.” (Chapter 20)
“What happened was this: after having played the first four bars two beats G minor two beats C seventh…they suddenly found themselves ascending by half tones…It was so exciting, the apparent escape from tonality . . .” (Chapter 21)
Well, okay. Those aren't just isolated passages: there are pages and pages of stuff like that, where the dramatic tension is "Gosh, can he do it?", when few casual readers will understand what it is he has to do. My friend Vito might get excited reading this,but Conroy expects me to, and he has written way over my head – and I bet over most people’s heads.
There’s also a chapter in which a jazz musician cryptically hands Claude a cryptic note, and then cryptically drops dead in the Automat. The significance of the note is never made clear.
Body and Soul is a pretty long book – 447 pages, and it took me a month to read on the bus – and ultimately not worth the trip. The lack of comprehensible tension is made worse by the fact that Cklaude can do no wrong, that everything works for him, that he’s invincible. So why be interested? I’m not, any more. I was for a while, wondering when someone was going to play “Body and Soul”. The song.
“Body and Soul” is a jazz standard and more – it’s a requirement for, at least, anyone who aspires to play sax in a jazz band. From what I’m told, “Body and Soul” is as basic and routine as a scale. If you can play the sax, you have played “Body and Soul”.
So it’s an important thing.
The book, Body and Soul, is about a musician: not a jazz musician, though he dabbles and likes to listen to jazz. And at no time are the words “body and soul” used in the book, except in the title. Go figure.
I guess there is an implication of “Body and Soul”, because this is a musician’s book, and I can’t imagine anyone not a musician getting caught up in the plot. And not just a casual musician, like me, but an accomplished musician, a student of music. Many of the conflicts, the sources of much of the tension, arise from situations the lay person couldn’t possibly relate to:
“Five or six bars in, Fredericks said, ‘Wait. Stop. Let me here is not legato. See if you can play it non legato’. Claude thought about it for a minute and began again, concentrating on the value of the notes . . .” (Chapter 6)
(On Charles Ives) “I guess it was a question of whether it’s a synthesis, a kind of prophetic use of dissonance as the only way to pull all the themes together and rise above them, or whether he’s thumbing his nose at us.” (Chapter 20)
“What happened was this: after having played the first four bars two beats G minor two beats C seventh…they suddenly found themselves ascending by half tones…It was so exciting, the apparent escape from tonality . . .” (Chapter 21)
Well, okay. Those aren't just isolated passages: there are pages and pages of stuff like that, where the dramatic tension is "Gosh, can he do it?", when few casual readers will understand what it is he has to do. My friend Vito might get excited reading this,but Conroy expects me to, and he has written way over my head – and I bet over most people’s heads.
There’s also a chapter in which a jazz musician cryptically hands Claude a cryptic note, and then cryptically drops dead in the Automat. The significance of the note is never made clear.
Body and Soul is a pretty long book – 447 pages, and it took me a month to read on the bus – and ultimately not worth the trip. The lack of comprehensible tension is made worse by the fact that Cklaude can do no wrong, that everything works for him, that he’s invincible. So why be interested? I’m not, any more. I was for a while, wondering when someone was going to play “Body and Soul”. The song.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)