I’ve lost all perspective. I hear the Beatles, I hear Bob Dylan. And I think, they’re no Miaow. (Peter Terzian)

There’s a lot of campus memoir in Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers On The Albums That Changed Their Lives; a lot of Brooklyn; a lot of crushes on the local kid who introduced the writer to The Smiths/Kate Bush/Fugazi/The Pretenders, in formative years. As expected.

This collection shines when it goes beyond the ‘am I cool enough?’ & ‘am I actually gay?’ theme of most submissions, and enters anthropological territory. Presenting the Top 5 chapters that do this:

1. ‘O Black And Unknown Bards’ on American Primitive Vol. II: Pre-War Revenants (1897-1939) John Jeremiah Sullivan describes the interdisciplinary approach used by collectors to preserve an early blues canon and the black American culture it expresses. Musician John Flahey & co. scour markets, doorknock for records while pest controlling, coax further the bounds of linguistic memory (lyric on ‘bolted flour’, anyone?) and ponder the forgotten lives of singers Bayless Rose, Pigmeat Terry, Isaiah Nettles et al. As a cd collector, I was fascinated especially by the technology of creating a cheap record (using shellac, which was short-supplied and confiscated in wartime for ammunition) and salvaging one (place a bent record under 2 planes of glass in Nashville sunlight).
2. ‘Blues For A Semester Abroard’ on Gloria Estafan’s Mi Terra. Awakened to Estefan during an unpleasant stay in the Dominican Republic (think Rihanna’s Man Down filmclip), Asali Solomon confesses that ‘At first all music in Spanish, from the polyrhythms of salsa to the more straight forward 2/2 of merengue and the tinny melancholy of bachata, all sound the same to me. That is to say, like major-key parade music coming from a forgotten radio.’ Harsh but true.
3. ‘Mental Chickens’ on the Topless Women Talk About Their Lives Soundtrack. Promising dig at the Kiwi accent, in that title. Todd Pruzan is of a few in Heavy Rotation to praise New Zealand’s Flying Nun Records. He speculates affectionately that ‘maybe being a punk rocker on a remote island nation, bobbing out there in the middle of the ocean, was like singing in the shower, where you could just belt it out, loud, loose, guessing vaguely at the melody, and sometimes even hitting it, but it doesn’t matter, because nobody was listening.’
4. ‘Northern Exposure’ on ABBA’s Super Trouper. Scandinavian dreaming in his Indian provincial youth, Pankaj Mishra says ‘The names themselves, when euphemistically coupled- Bjorn & Agnetha, Beny & Anni-Frid- spoke of the purest romance.’ This reminds me of my favourite PO box, back in my mail-sorter days: a Dr Arnagretta Hunter, and her beautifully named family.
5. ‘I Love To Listen To’ on The Eurythmics’ Savage. In which Daniel Handler- but you know him as Lemony Snickett- drops a Ween reference (NEVER FORGET). ‘When you’re seventeen you can drive around at midnight listening to anything and your life will change’. Handler creditsSavage with reinforcing the freaky in our world, and his own eventual success through fiction.

Through the effortless way of juxtaposition, it behoves science fiction & fantasy to teach us more about our lived, real world, via a fictional one. The science in The Handmaid’s Tale  is in addendum- something about a mass sterilising virus is mentioned?- and the nightmare corresponds closer, almost perfectly, to the realm of ’speculative fiction’. Caution has imbedded itself into the act of speculation (compare with ‘prospecting’), and there is caution aflit throughout our heroine’s memoir of anger.

Stripped of rights, Offred writes of her Commander:

He wanted me to play Scrabble with him, and kiss him as if I meant it. This is one of the most bizarre things that’s happened to me, ever. Context is all.

Telling her story from the totalitarian state of Gilead, Offred’s former days and former name are culturally located in the context of 1986, when the novel first published. She remembers lying with her married lover, happy, while imagining herself in hell as The Other Woman. She remembers Elvis, before he was outlawed.

I feel so lonely, baby, I feel so lonely, baby, I feel so lonely I could die… I don’t sing this often. It makes my throat hurt.

Aside from reminding us how good we have it (we= Western women today), this particular passage had me rediscovering the power of poetry. Disillusioned by whatever, Offred’s heartbreak here struck me as important; it struck me again that Heartbreak Hotel and Amazing Grace and lyrics and poetry are, as I’d once known them to be, important. Cheers for that, Margaret Atwood. Thanx!!!

A nostalgic jaunt through Sister Carrie is dim and incidental. Nice enough. 1900’s twenty cent sirloin steak, Pinkerton detectives, streetcar unions, chorus line careers: these details happily furnish a text that delights neither linguistically or intellectually. It is a very real text, so that an amusing sentence can exist only if an amusing character, or amusement for a character, does.

Carrie Meeber and her aliases (Ms Drouet/ Webster/ Madenda) are sensitive, young and pretty. An inland girl finally brought by fate to a changing New York,

She also marveled at the whistles of the hundreds of vessels in the harbor- the long, low cries of the sound steamers and ferryboats when fog was on. The mere fact that these things spoke from the sea made them wonderful. 

Though her moral choices are freed from punishment or even scrutiny by Theodore Dreiser- making this novel shocking for its day- the tragedy of George Hurstwood, her middle aged seducer, secures a definite message against sin. Reduced to breadlines and begging, referred to as ‘the ex-manager’ as he chooses a brooding, decrepid path to the grave, his end surpasses all others for desperation. For rich, famous Carrie, we are told persistently that she is unhappy and always will be; a kind of disatisfaction in the vein of Nealy O’Hara from Valley Of The Dolls, except peaceful. The point of difference, except that Dreiser probably just likes his Carrie more than his Hurstwood, is in age, wherein it’s stressed that man grows ‘weaker, older, less incisive mentally, as the man approaches old age. There are no other states’. A judgment that eventually damns everyone and a judgment I wouldn’t take too seriously.

Growing up on Roald Dahl and Nick Cave, my aversion to black comedy has been a recent development. Those lively circuses for ideas, unrestricted by the bounds of taste, sensitivity & reality, too often have brains but not beauty.

In 2002’s Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk works playfully. What could be more fun than making fun of hippies and the day job? There was wordplay, too: an array of fashion models are murdered by Nash, a paramedic necrophiliac with an African death spell lullaby, and there’s also a collection of mini  models created obsessively by Carl Streator until he’s called to save the world.

Fraught with trauma, and having serially murdered, Carl and Helen find each other and hit the road to destroy copies of Poems And Rhymnes Around The World. He crushes the model neighbourhood homes and shops he’s created, and Helen’s assistant lances his blisters from this: tiny dinnerplates & gargoyles & mail boxes squirt out of his feet with the pus. Which I guess is interesting but, also, EW. It’s like in 1972’s The Ecstasy Of Owen Muir, where Ring Lardner Jr closes the tale of Owen with him relaxing on his monastery floor, sourcing any future ejaculation from a series of painful boils. Black! Comedy!

Why so disgusting? Can’t we just have one sexual encounter with a pretty woman, without her being murdered first? Can’t we see just one baby that avoids manslaghter-by-lullaby? Can’t just a bit of America be enjoyed on the roadtrip, without a reminder of ecological destruction by starlings & tumbleweed & humans?

Just as the lovely bones of Polanski, Plath, Dickens & Jean Rhys creak audibly through their writings, Palahniuk’s personal darkness makes Lullaby an extremely bleak read.

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues is a jumpsuited, high, meta, free-lovin’, environmentalist, period novel of the seventies. It is uniquely gynaecological; its title hints at Rubber Rose Ranch tragedy (named for a brand of douche), but is also used explicitly to caption an act of masturbation. A spirited force for personal freedom, it is curiously without selfishness: love guides and usually provides (heroine Sissy Hankshaw is a hitch-hiker first and adulteress second, but these roles are applauded by the company she keeps, and especially by author and in-text psychologist Dr Robbins). The sexual content is creative and unsexy. The humour manifestly addresses the meanings of life.

When reading cult fiction, it’s impossible to ignore the cult itself. It takes three times longer than normal to read this book. For example, you read pg 204: ’we are Dr Frankensteins who have created time as a monster with three heads: past, present and future’. Then you have to decide whether you should get that tattooed on your arm. Then you decide not to. Then you wonder if Tom Robbins is such a genius after all? Then you get annoyed that the novel is taking so long to finish. Then you read the next line, and you like it, and probably someone has tattooed that next line somewhere, and how about a quick Google Image Search…, and so on. 

If you loveEven Cowgirls Get The Blues,set it free. If you don’t:

Don’t deprive us of an opportunity to love unselfishly that which, like Christ when he was alive, is difficult to love. Don’t spoil our fun.

Occasionally trying, it really does read like an unforgettably talkative hitch-hiker, or hitch-hikee, that, in hindsight, you were grateful for crossing states with.

I was attentive to Scarlett Hamilton Kennedy Butler (nee O’Hara) because Courtney Love was. And when she declared that she would “live through this”, my thumb stained inky, I stayed attentive, passed this, my Gone With The Wind checkpoint.

That elementally selfish, archetypal bitch Scarlett has flirted generations of readers since 1936: my father imitated Mammy before I’d met her and my grandfather told me Peachtree was a real place before I’d been there (carrying around the 1000 page bestseller invites spoilers, be warned!). There can’t be a more famous text of the American Civil War and old Southern civilisation. I wondered if Margaret Mitchell realised how Modern her melodrama was… Mitchell had been touched personally and tragically by WWI and, though her style is conventional, her characters are bedevilled by modernity: nostalgia, moral ambiguity, disordered patriarchy, sex, and the individual’s might & rights. These were real, for real Confederates, regardless of what decade they were also fictionised in. Perhaps the mediated twentieth century claimed too rich a role in Modernism, because of photojournalism and noir film and psychology. The Great War is called so because it’s our war and we called it so. Why should it set the atrocious standard for humanity, still? In its context, all war is atrocious, all aftermath unprecedented. Scarlett’s neighbours in Clayton County and Atlanta are Kafka’s cockroaches waiting for Godot en route to the lighthouse!

Almost. ‘Gone with the wind’, as a philosophic epitaph to a lost society, is not so traumatised as ‘All that is solid melts into air’. Funny how the first seems so antiquated, devised as it was in the 1930s for a tale of the 1860s. The second was lifted from the 1840s to describe literature of the 1920s…. Um, this here scattered cultural timeline? THIS IS WHY I CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS!

Maybe all sorts of bullshit happens to all sorts of travellers, or maybe John Steinbeck & I are unique and he is just my cosmic twin. In 1962’s Travels With Charley In Search Of America, Steinbeck is famous, nearing death, and still has to deal with loved ones thinking he’s mad; over zealous border controllers; being alone; loneliness compounded by depressing reading material; senseless cost due to ignorance…He talks to himself (his dog, too) and drinks a lot, for any number of reasons.

Cosmic twins, I tell you.

As close to nonfiction & autobiography as he got, Travels With Charley sees Steinbeck getting personally offended at ecological ignorance and Southern racial bigotry. His was an old skool century.

I was told that a stranger’s purpose in moving about the country might cause inquiry or even suspicion. For this reason I racked a shotgun, two rifles, and a couple of fishing rods in my truck, for it is my experience that if a man is going hunting or fishing his purpose is understood and even applauded.

Environmentalism & civil rights might have ‘happened’ since ’62, but this rule still applies. Try being an Australian girl traveling alone, when no one believes your accent, your age; no one believes you’re generally interested in experiencing the USA, and no one believes your boyfriend is not allowed to leave the country & in turn allowed you to leave it. Like Jenny Field in The World According to Garp, we become Sexual Suspects.

Beauty maketh the tragedy. It’s a thing. A Thomas Hardy thing. Why else would anyone read about domestic violence, abortion, a series of unsexy sexual enounters, etc, if they weren’t written with crystal-like clarity?

The family of The Easter Parade is a sad family, realised in the evenly paced, elegantly honest language of Richard Yates; unpolluted by melodrama. A very good novel. However, it was- specifically- chapter 2 of part 2 that made it a compulsive read.

I guess the chapter of Emily’s Midwestern move simply involved a lot of things that I like. The University of Iowa’s writing program, for example, and having a little house with a little dog. Chocolate while the washing machine is on. Snow, suede, country walks, trees. Articulated seasons.

And then, the breakdown of a relationship, in screenplay-ready dialogue. ‘You still like me?’ Jack checks. ‘You’re not getting any younger’. ‘I know I’m no prize package’. ‘I wish you wouldn’t say that’ and ‘I wish a lot of things’.

…he shouted and threw a whiskey glass against the wall- he seemed to feel he might get her to stay if only they had a loud enough quarrel- and then his collapse into pleading: ‘Oh, baby, don’t do this; please don’t do this to me…’

A terrifying book that, as a document of human life, revelates.

Folsom-Sacramento Valley light rail, College Green station:

A skinny cowboy (red shirt, shades, Hat) rests his framed Apocalypse Now poster against the sun-warmed concrete bench and plays Loser by Beck on his phone. I saw him buy that at the Folsom Blvd Flea Market from a stall selling ‘$1 for 2!’ VHS videos. He was highly visible between those crowding tables set mosaically with Latin American CDs and families with double prams & neck tattoos.

Should’ve haggled the earrings I bought for my boy, thoughtfully nickel-free earrings that I might keep for myself. Mustangs!, horses of silver plate and diamante (one had one less diamante than the other). I considered The Way Of All Flesh, but I’d already bought a dozen thrift store books.

At College Green, there is a 30min wait for trains in either direction. I don’t pay attention to the skinny cowboy playlist because George from Fresno, on my other side, asks me what I’m reading. ‘Political Fictions. I don’t know much about American politics so most of it is over my head…’ cue the trademark sorry-I’m-a-cute-Australian smile.

What usually follows is, the American goes ‘ahhh, politics…?’ like that’s tantalising, and I go ‘This particular chapter is about Bill Clinton’, and they go ‘Clinton! Well, the only thing you need to know about him is…?’. An ellipsis to verify if I indeed know what oral sex is. Then my next draught is on the house.

What followed instead was:

…My youngest, now, he didn’t donothin’.If I had any money for a lawyer he wouldn’t be in jail. Even ask her! Allegra says he did nothin’; he didn’ touch her; he didn’ sodomise her; he had covers for her! He was tryin’ to help her! But he was there, y’know. And he’s got life, and 140 years, for another charge. But he didn’ kill anybody or donothin’!

I said I was sorry, we shook hands, and continued passed the evocatively named suburbs of Manlove, Starfire, Sunrise, Tiber, Ironside- to the end of the line. Leaving Sutter St, there was California’s glorious afternoon sun. Porch swings, flagpoles, pick-up trucks, Marines bummper stickers, boys playing chasey, cyclists, camelias & oranges, a dogwalker whose labrador left happy spit on my breast, teen lovers, a man with guitar, daisies, a horse rider, kayakers, a covered bridge, frogs everywhere. I was at peace when I reached the sign ‘FOLSOM STATE PRISON NO TRESPASSING’.

I am the highway and the peregrine and all of the sails that ever went to sea.

(There would be NOTHING funnier than hearing the man say this during sexual intercourse)