daydalus blog

The Novel in the Internet Age

March 2, 2010 – 9:41 am

From The Point (http://www.thepointmag.com/archive/hard-feelings/): Whats starts out as a critique of the works of Houellebecq turns into an exploration of what and where literature can go in the 21st century. Found this passage very truthful, especially since I’ve been reading DFW’s Infinite Jest, which reaches such scope and depth - and that was in the mid 90s.

“It is perfectly fair—and what’s more, manifestly accurate—to say that social and cultural conditions are presently antithetical in lots of ways to creating literature that resonates with the times. A familiar way of putting it is to evoke a nefarious alliance of massively multiplied information sources and stimuli with a clustered and distracting mass culture, and the corresponding shrinkage of the average person’s attention span and willingness to isolate himself with a book. The novelist is caught in a double bind: in order to properly capture the feel of a kinetic, overloaded modern world she must pack more, and more varied, material into her work, but does so for an audience that has less and less inclination to engage with it. Alternatively, the novelist simplifies and straightens her work in order to win readers, but at the expense of representing the world as she truly perceives it to be (i.e. “selling out”). There is a concern that the novel is simply unable, structurally, to harmonize with an era where the written word has been so heavily marginalized by sound and image. Or maybe the form is exhausted—there being only so many different ways to stick words together into a coherent whole, and only so many styles to adopt and tones to take, etc., might the last three hundred years of cultural activity not have burnt up our artistic resources? These worries are valid enough, but in fact there has never been a moment where the novel really was a pure and uncomplicatedly meaningful thing. It has always been a struggle against the elements.”

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Best Of: Music

December 17, 2009 – 8:04 am

These lists are popping up all over the place. Figured I’d put up my own.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

This record was called out as best of the year way back when it was released in January. It’s lived up to the title. One of my favorite memories was walking north from Penn Station to Columbus Circle through Times Square, listening to this album straight through. Normally it would be a painful, aggravating stroll. But with the melodious labyrinths of My Girls, Daily Routine, Bluish, and Brothersport as soundtrack, weaving tourists and hustlers grew cinematic, all lit from above with rainbow LEDs.

Passion Pit – Manners

Joyous, ecstatic, blissed out, danceable. And marketable. This record has probably been the accompaniment to more ads this year than the Beatles. More power to them. I could care less about the sellout label, especially for songs that possess such tightly evolved electropop DNA.

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

I’d heard Phoenix before, usually piped into a whimsical Sophia Coppola film. But here they’ve upped their amps and toned down the airy flimsiness that was so…French. Hell, there are even bombs on the album art. I think they acknowledge their opus, given the composer name-dropping title. Even as Liztomania and 1901 are tightly constructed singles, the highlight of the album is the mournful drone of Rome - memories of lost civilizations and loves.

Sunset Rubdown – Dragonslayer

In a year when the majority of musical output (both mainstream and indie) was run through ten thousand post-production tools, Sunset Rubdown was a refreshing change. Their songs aren’t lo-fi or minimalist or fuzzy (the most obvious and unfortunate backlash to the computerization of music). Instead they are crisp ballads of strange characters and mystical lands, painted with lilting keyboard, roiling drums and often angry guitar. And there’s urgency and enough human touch so the entire thing feels like it was recorded live for an audience of one.

Dan Deacon – Bromst

The volume of this record has always been too loud in my iPod. Perhaps it was intentional. Deacon’s music is like a maelstrom of cacophonous sounds (glitchy scratches, alarms, chipmunked cultists) coming together into something worshipful. If my eardrums have to suffer for that, so be it.

Franz Ferdinand – Tonight

Franz Ferdinand has constructed an alter ego of Ulysses, and like the hero of Homer’s Odyssey, he’s on a journey through dangerous waters. There are a few more Sirens in this tale. The night of revelry starts out standard enough, a few drinks and dance rock, but then it gets epically weird as the entire thing deconstructs into minimalist electronica.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It’s Blitz!

For all of Karen O’s cutesy projects this year (Wild Things, Flaming Lips - I Can Be A Frog), she needed to do something appropriately punk to maintain her cred. If the album art of It’s Blitz doesn’t count (in all its feminist irony), then her two openers “Zero” and “Heads Will Roll” will have to do.

The Decemberists - Hazards of Love

Shape-shifting animals have been Colin Meloy’s go-to image for two records now (crane, faun), spicing his historical ballads with a rich dose of magical realism. And even with all the literary fireworks, the musicianship follows. The biggest shift in sound is the quasi-doom metal guitar in “A Bower Song”. The guest vocals can be distracting as well. But then we’re right back into the saddle, fording raging rivers and confronting evil queens, all for destined love.

Metric – Fantasies

Emily Haines has quite a timid voice for all her indie rock prolificity. But it meshes perfectly with her frightened rabbit lyrics of “Help I’m Alive”. The record is a mix of toe tapping guitar pop and shadowy ambiance, but her voice blankets the whole thing in warm innocence.

Big Pink – A Brief History of Love

The catchy radio-friendly songs like Dominos and Velvet drew me in, but it was the shoegaze epic Crystal Visions that sold me. What a way to open a record - “200 naked pure gold girls” ride in on vortexes of distortion. From there its mostly pedestrian pop but its still catchy enough to deserve a nod.