There’s been much blog ado over The New Yorker’s “Summer Fiction: 20 Under 40.” Check out the gnashing here, here and here (we promise to complain more in a later post). However the writers learned their craft, they learned to write first sentences well. In fact, we found the lead sentence to be the best part of most of the stories. Clue to craft: Those with the least interesting first sentences tended to be the least interesting stories. As a service to our readers, we’ve taken the first sentence of each of the eight stories and put them together in no particular order, to make a free-association poem of a quality no more dubious than the stories themselves.–Cabbage Rabbit

Max had a name for what had happened to his son: the Accident.

The boy and his twin brother grew up on the streets of Northside,

down in the little choke valley, befouled by industry,

between university hill to the southeast and the neighborhood to the north,

College Hill, which had no college, despite its name,

only modest white houses hinting at the white suburbs to come.

The boy wore a black parka, a matching ski cap, bluejeans, and sneakers;

he appeared to be five years old; and he was weeping.

He hadn’t heard from Kate Lotvelt in two weeks. Early yet, the morning clouds,

the color of silver fox,

and Lazarus was running. Lucky diary! Undeserving diary!

People say no one reads anymore, but I find that’s not the case.

Spirituality has long haunted the music of guitarist John McLaughlin.  But its a different kind of spirituality than commonly accepted.  Serenity is replaced by driven purpose sometime almost furious in its speed and direction. The organic is overcome by the electric. The enlightened sense of  “taking it as it comes”  is replaced by a lock-step unison through structured themes and powerful rhythms. This is an enlightenment with weight, purpose and intensity.

It may have been difficult to make the spiritual connection when McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra arrived on the scene in 1972. The imagery was all there — the band’s name, the album’s title The Inner Mounting Flame, its candle-lit album cover — but the music, more fire than flame,  was something else again, mostly speed, spark and machine-gun rhythm. But not exclusively. “Lotus On Irish Streams” a meditative, acoustic number better fit the cliche of spirituality. These loud-quiet contrasts have been present through out McLaughlin’s career, begining with the devotional acoustic and avant garde sensibilities of his first recording, Extrapolation, through the dichotomy of Shakti and Electric Dreams.

The mistake we make is to type-cast spiritual music as acoustic, pastoral, reverent or reserved. Think of spiritual music that is not easily defined by these terms — Santana, Alice Coltrane, Charles Lloyd, the more fiery ragas played by Ravi Shankar — and its a simple matter to see that spiritual music, like spirit itself, can be all things, including intense, acutely rhythmical music.

John Coltrane’s solos on  A Love Supreme, possibly the most spiritual of jazz recordings, carry an intensity that expresses the yearning and the search of the seeker. Something like it is heard on McLaughlin’s latest, To the One, an electric jazz-rock outing that relies on tough drumming, tight vibrant bass lines, shimmering keyboards and its leader’s high-voltage electric transmission. Without McLaughlin’s explanatory notes on the inside cover — “The inspiration behind this recording stems from two sources: Firstly from hearing the recording ‘A Love Supreme’ by John Coltrane in the 1960’s (sic), and secondly from my own endeavors towards ‘The One’ throughout the past 40 years” –  listeners might think that the guitarist was making another turn towards jazz-fusion.

There’s less insistence and more acceptance on To the One than heard in the Mahavishnu recordings, electric or acoustic. From the recording’s opening bass slide and cymbal splash, the music is positive, serene and upbeat. There’s nothing here to suggest the path to The One is long, arduous or otherwise marked with temptation. It’s as if McLaughlin has already attained what he seeks and now is enjoying it.

The 4th Dimension  (not to be confused with the 5th) is McLaughlin’s most polished band. Much of its drive and cleanliness comes from bassist Etienne M’Bappe whose rich tone and detailed play are the fine line underscoring the proceedings. M’Bappe is something of a juggler, supporting every note from his bandmates and propelling it back into the air. His solos are busy, buzzing affairs filled with lyricism despite their speed. Drummer Mark Mondesir is crisp and tasteful, having the drive of Billy Cobham and the inventiveness of Jack DeJohnette. Keyboardist (and sometimes drummer) Gary Husband finds the right moods and tonal combinations to complement any direction the music might take. His accompaniment is smart and reflective, his chords often coming a step behind the lead as if to give them a split moment to sink in. His solos, especially the one on “Discovery,” are warm and sophisticated. Just when he seems ready to overstate his case, he finds a place of conviction, a sense of contentment.

McLaughlin brings a sense of joy to his play that reflects the recording’s attainment. Listen to him on”Special Being” as he spins and pirouettes like an accomplished gymnast. He gives a characteristic roughness to his tone on “The Fine Line” before sliding into a singing theme. “Lost and Found” is the disc’s most relaxed piece and its most beautiful. It’s resonating synthesizer backdrop and McLaughlin’s smooth synth-guitar tones give it a meditative feel heightened by M’Bappe’s repeated bass motif presented at different octaves.

The most spiritual of the six pieces on this short, 40 minute-plus recording, is the title tune. Husband’s clipped cymbal work (he doubles on drums for this number) accents McLaughlin’s synth strolls in a way that suggests idle contentment. In a nod to A Love Supreme, there’s some unison chanting over a drone at the end that suggests the journey isn’t yet over. Note how in his comments McLaughlin writes after “periods of indolence, doubt and even plain laziness” he hears the call of his soul and returns to his “inner ear,” not his inner being. We find this brilliant; the portal to enlightenment being the ear rather than the mind or the soul. It’s certainly the place where so much joy, so much beauty, so much knowledge has entered.–Cabbage Rabbit

The Gaza Flotilla Raid in May that left nine dead and dozens wounded has already faded into the background of oil-soaked news. While in Seattle earlier this month, the Rabbit witnessed attempts at keeping the issue alive: dueling protests on the University of Washington campus in which both bullhorned sides invited the other into the space between them for “real” discussion (neither side budged while we watched), and a large, pro-Palestinian march the following day through downtown. Similar actions have been  reported around the country and the world. The opposing UW protests emerged in our mind as an symbol of how little chance there is of worthwhile resolution to the West Bank and Gaza issue. No doubt,  by the time summer is over, the flotilla incident will be just another footnote in a long, cruel and bloody struggle.

The death toll in the flotilla incident is small compared to that alleged in the two incidents illustrated in Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza. The book is a long account of Sacco’s investigation of two actions in Gaza that occurred back in 1956, one in the town of Khan Younis that left 275 Palestinians dead, another in Rafah that left 111 dead. While the overall effect of Sacco’s narrative is one of shock, disgust and shame it also serves as a reminder of the on-going nature of repression and killing that has marked the Palestinian-Israeli struggle for some 60 years.

Sacco, author-illustrator of Palestine and Safe Area Grorazde is the premier graphic journalist, the creator of detailed, researched, investigative comics that are no laughing matter. He approaches his subject in classic Gonzo style, injecting his search for stories into a larger narrative. This injection strengthens his reporting with its wide-angled, contemporary background to, in this case, events over 50 years old. That he concentrated on personal accounts, often to make up for a lack of official documentation, makes his work extremely engaging. Perspective–no pun intended– is everything in his work.

Sacco traveled to Gaza in 2001 with reporter Chris Hedges for Harper’s magazine and soon returned to collect accounts of the massacres that occurred during the ‘56 Suez conflict. As readers of Palestine know, his sympathies are with the Palestinian people and this will disqualify him as a legitimate source for many. Yet anyone reading his book and examining the illustrations cannot help but conclude that the Palestinians suffer overwhelming poverty, repression and the effects of  what amounts to war. His infrequent sympathies for Israelis thrust into terrible situations as well as infrequent but obvious disapproval of some Palestinian actions offer precious little balance to a story that has little of it to offer.

In his introduction, Sacco acknowledges  the “scant” official documentation of the events he investigates as well as the questionable reliability of oral testimony. What documentation he was able to discover by sending researchers into the Israel State Archives and the archives of the Israel Defense Forces is listed (and quoted) in the Appendix. He issues the hope that his work will cause some Israeli veterans to come forward with accounts of their own.

Sacco also cautions readers not to see his illustrations as fact. Despite using historical photos when drawing his landscapes, he says that drawing comes with “a measure of refraction” and should be seen as such. (It’s surprising how little things have changed from his depictions of 1956 to the  current day drawings.)

Sacco makes clear the complications of life in Gaza; the waste, the shortages, the crowds, the filth.  He claims that the half of Gaza’s workforce which once worked in Israel have found themselves replaced by Thai, Romanian and Chinese workers.  Invited by a United Nations Relief Worker Agency employee to visit a home in Khan Younis, Sacco sweats and becomes claustrophobic at the tight conditions in which 11 people live.. He considers what little work is avaialble hunting scrap or the rare teaching position funded by UNRWA. He finds that the Palestinian Authority hires police whose only duty seems to be to collect salaries. The most well-off man he meets works for an American aid agency as a facilitator of “democratization.”  “Basically, it’s bullshit,” says the man.

These modern-day accounts of Sacco’s investigation and story gathering make the book far more relevant than just an account of the massacres. When those accounts do come, they are filled with horror, grief and inexplicable cruelty. Some of Sacco’s most extreme panel’s are over-sized Hieronymus Bosh-like nightmares depicting killing, detention and states of cruel pandemonium. Cross-hatched scenes of darkness or those with the story-teller super-imposed on his own story are done to chilling effect.

Unlike Palestine, the art work doesn’t evolve but maintains a direct, composed style. The strongest work in Palestine is its portraits. Here, the portraits are all of a kind, similar in mood and expression. Footnotes’ best illustrations comes in the narrative flow. Sacco is a master at finding the right action and composition to move his story forward and even the scatter of spent shell casings on a blank background has an impact on his story.

Comic touches are few. A restaurant menu is rolled open to reveal “Bombings! Assassinations! Incursions!” Sacco makes laughs at his own expense and his is the only overly characterized face: large lips, receding hairline, eyes constantly whited out behind  large, round spectacles. He also makes fun of the press corp and their proclivity to drink and party even as duty calls in sections that recall the indifferent press in the movies The Year of Living Dangerously and Under Fire.

That party scene  serves to illustrate his frustrations — and hopes — beyond the murderous bickering. Among the international crowd of reporters and N.G.O.s are “hepcat Arabs from Ramallah and right-on Jews from Tel Aviv sharing salads and grooving to the same post-bop jazz. Are the dark-haired cuties who jump up when the dance beat kicks in Palestinian or Israeli?…Ahhh, even in the belly of the world’s most intractable conflict there’s a glimmer of hope in which to exalt!”

At end, Sacco feels shame for what he’s lost while gathering his accounts, “for losing something along the way as I collected my evidence, disentangled it, dissected it, indexed it, and logged it onto my chart.” This confession comes as something of a surprise as he has shown nothing but compassion for those who experienced the killings. In a series of almost four wordless pages he runs a final account through his mind, from a perspective inside the punished crowd, as if in attempt to develop an empathy he didn’t have. If he didn’t succeed with himself — and what preceeds it suggests that he did — Sacco certainly succeeds with the reader.–Cabbage Rabbit

Rereading Douglas Coupland’s  Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture reminded this baby boomer how important and, in its way, groundbreaking the book was when published in 1991. Not that it received much attention, despite its title,  at release. No major reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker or The Los Angeles Times (somebody please prove me wrong about this). Only culture critic Robin Abcarian of the LA Times seemed to catch on and then, months behind the book’s release, only in light of his second novel.

The book was different even in its design. It’s use of margin slogans and illustrations separated it from the previous generation of literature. Also in the margins were the defining terms of the times, such as  “MCJOB: A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who never held one.” And “NUTRITIONAL SLUMMING: Food whose enjoyment stems not from flavor but from a complex mixture of class connotations, nostalgia signals, and packaging semiotics.” Even its off-beat size (8″x9″) made it stand out.

But writers, particularly those interested in marketing, were quick to catch on to the idea of Generation X that prior to the novel had been the province of punk rock and those unable to find a suitable label for any generation of teens that came after (and sometimes including) the boomers.

Coupland defines the subject generation  not quite a third of the way into the book when Andrew tells the story of his working at a “teenybopper magazine” in Japan and seeing the alienation of its same-age generation, those for whom the prevailing culture, as one of his Japanese colleagues puts it, “murder my ambition.”

“…shin jin rui – that’s what the Japanese newspapers call people like those kids in their twenties at the office –  new human beings. It’s hard to explain. We have the same group over here and it’s just as large, but it doesn’t have a name — an X generation — purposefully hiding itself. There’s more space over here [in the U.S.] to hide in — to get lost in — to use as camouflage. You’re not allowed to disappear in Japan.”

This disappearing act is less related to generation than to class (see “McJobs” and “Nutritional Slumming” above). Near the end of the book, Andrew sees this invisibility being shared by his entire family. He’s lit hundreds (”maybe thousands”) of candles in the family living room for the holiday celebration. The effect is revelatory, “the normally dreary living room covered with a molten living cake-icing of white fire, all surfaces devoured in flame — a dazzling fleeting empire of ideal light.” But once the candles are snuffed, life reverts to normal. And that’s when the true revelation rises.

“But I get this feeling –

“It is a feeling that our emotions, while wonderful, are transpiring in a vacuum, and I think it boils down to the fact that we’re middle class.

“You see, when you’re middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happiness es are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.”

While Coupland is credited with painting the alienation of a certain generation, he’s also defined it for all contemporary generations, a definition that speaks to class struggle and middle-class envy leading to unfullfillment. Some of this class consciousness exists in  Generation A but its alienation is a separation more from nature and emotional experience caused by a dependence on technology, much of it pharmacological. Telling stories is central to both books but there’s a difference. The stories in A are all about plot. In X, they’re all about character. In X, Coupland explains story-telling in terms of “the letter inside us,” an idea he credits to Rilke, and that “only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.” He also uses Rilke to define the separation from reality felt by the alienated, a theme that pervades both books.

Coupland’s excellent first novel, badly misunderstood when it first came out (by this dumb bunny,  too)  spawned a curse of generational considerations, mostly on the negative side of opportunity and abundance, that we can’t seem to escape. Film critic A.O. Scott bemoaned (enough whining!) this curse in a piece that references Sam Lipsyte’s timely book The Ask. Scott suggests that Generation X –those slackers — are having a mid-life crisis.  But what they’re going through — what most of us are going through — is more like Coupland’s middle-class invisibility. How can you be someone, at any age,  when no one can see you? Generation A is not only less of a novel for its failure to make the label stick (”Generation A” comes from an address given by Kurt Vonnegut at Syracuse University in 1994) but also for making its five central characters circumstantial celebrities, something that will never happen to X’s Andy, Claire and Dag, midlife crisis or not.   –Cabbage Rabbit

Storytelling has mysterious, unmeasurable power and storytellers have expended a lot of that power trying to explain it to us. Let me try. Hearing a story is a way of organizing the brain and stimulating thought. Formulating a story is an exercise in ordering thought, making associations and generally “thinking through” scenarios and intellectual questions. You want to understand or explain something? Make a story of it.

There’s a fear that this power may be lost, like an animal gone extinct, in the age of texts, tweets and abbreviated cursing (WTF?). Or maybe, as Douglas Coupland suggests in his latest novel Generation A, the rediscovery of storytelling by a generation that’s been cheated of it will give it a badly needed refreshing.

Coupland saddled himself with generational themes back in 1991 when he gave us Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture, the story of  three, post-baby boomers trying to make sense of their lives and the culture at large through storytelling (”Either our lives become stories , or there’s just no way to get through them,” declares its female lead). In ten novels since (and we admit to reading only two of the others), he’s wrestled with the monster he created — generational lit — and the particular generation which he’s credited with naming (his own). If anything, his characters, including Tyler Johnson from Shampoo Nation, are seeking escape from generational labeling; that attached to their own and that which has been inflicted on them by their baby-boomer, ’60s indulgent forebears. Generation A is also about escaping the times but in more peculiar circumstances.

A’s times are the near future when bees, those pesky little pollinators that give us everything from fruit and honey to opium, have mysteriously gone extinct. Or so the story goes. It’s also a time where the world is relatively happy, thanks to a drug known as Solon, which seems to negate the measurement of time. The result is that prisoners don’t seem to mind prison, depressives don’t mind depression and the merely disgruntled can get through life without the grunting. Doing the drug is akin to reading Finnegan’s Wake. Shades of Soma! The whole world is hooked.

Then, on one momentous day, five people roughly the same age and in different parts of the world are stung. The five are commandeered by quasi-governmental-corporate authorities and held in captivity where they are fed Jell-O. Upon release, they seek each other, gathering on an island off the Newfounland coast, aided by a mysterious, seemingly sympathetic benefactor. Let the stories begin.

Our bee-stung heroes discover their importance as the stories unwind. Once they  get going its easy to see where they will head, minus a surprising capper. Cue the Jell-O.

Other reviewers have denigrated the stories told in the novel’s telling (they’re all offset by smaller typeface, titles and authors though that’s apparent from the narrative). But this bunny thinks that the stories aren’t that bad, even entertaining at the times they take sudden spins and plunges.  We think Coupland intended to give us a view to the current state of the short-story and novelist’s craft: this one’s Yann Martel, this one T.C. Boyle, here’s  Carver and Murakami, even Alice Munro.  Coupland’s reason for this — neither parody nor praise  — seems unclear (and may disprove our tidy little theory). But Coupland makes clear the magic and importance of storytelling even as he warns against its loss. Nothing could be more generational.

The book, divided into narratives about and from the five stingees,  is of two speeds, the downhill all in the first half, the slow crawl up to conclusion all in the second when the stories are told. Most of Coupland’s themes — alienation, corporate greed, loss of the natural world — are revealed and dissected early which makes the resolution somewhat anti-climatic. But the framing of the whole, done so cleverly and without malice towards even the malicious, is a mark for inventive and engaging storytelling. Coupland is a master of bringing the now and new to his stories — as one writer has said, his work is so current it seems slightly ahead of the present — but he also astute enough to tie in the relevant past. Referring to the group of five as “Wonka” children sets them both of their generation and apart. This kind of cultural pollination makes his story flower.–Cabbage Rabbit

The death of the great pianist Hank Jones on Sunday, May 16 at the age of 91 has been followed by controversy. New York Times reporters Corey Kilgannon and Andy Newman visited Jones’ room at 108th St. and Broadway in NYC after his death and painted a picture of a spartan existence. It’s unclear whether or not the description of Jones’ living conditions in a 12 x 12 foot room were meant to invoke sympathy or make some kind of statement on the fate of older jazz musicians in today’s culture. What it did was release a barrage of negative comments.

The reporters speak of Jones “unmade bed” ( he died in a Bronx hospice), a clutter of sheet music, awards and recordings of Chopin, Debussy and Ravel. The closet was filled with “designer neck ties and sharp-looking suits” and there was a book of Sherlock Holmes mysteries on the bed stand. The Yamaha electric piano Jones used for practice sported a pair of head phones.

Some making comments took the bait: “No one commented on how sad this is. Sad that he lived alone, sad that he died alone, sad that his life of charm and sophistication (the music, the recordings, the clothes, the elegance, even in a simple room) appeared not to contain the many things most people cherish.” But many were angry. “There is something very untoward about going into this gentleman’s room less than two days after he passed away and opening up his life to the entire world, presumably before he has had a chance to be mourned and buried by his family and friends,” spoke one of the more polite. I was at first saddened, then outraged, to read the Hank Jones piece by Corey Kilgannon and Andy Newman. Why was it deemed appropriate — under any circumstance—to compromise the privacy of and report on and photograph the dismantling of a man’s life possessions; and to do so in such an-ill fitting, misleading and exploitive (sic) manner and tone. ”

There’s a lot of insight to be gained from these comments and the Rabbit encourages reading them. Especially interesting is the attempt by Kilgannon to explain his motivation (comment #34) and the following comment (#35) from renowned bassist and Jones’ collaborator Charlie Haden and wife Ruth Cameron ripping our intrepid reporter a new one (also #30). There’s a long comment from Jones’ long time manger Jean-Pierre LeDuc, an even longer one from his surviving niece and nephew and a couple from his close friends who provide context to Mr. Jones’ living conditions (#26 and #32). Seems he had a home in upstate New York, a wife who lived in an assisted care facility and frequent contact with friends and family.

The Rabbit thinks that a man as gentlemanly and graceful (like his playing) as Mr. Jones would have been confused, if not disturbed, by this attention (I was introduced to Mr. Jones once and heard him perform a handful of times). Those we knew who knew Mr. Jones spoke of him with the highest respect. He was a gentleman in all regards.

I’ve found myself projecting my own thoughts on this scenario. Though acclaimed, he was less visible in the formidable shadows of his younger brothers Thad and Elvin and never once, in true gentlemanly style, seemed to mind. Some of his most heard work was in the background–accompanying Marilyn Monroe’s famous birthday song to President Kennedy and, for some of us our first exposure to piano-playing of the type, his work at CBS, notably with the Captain Kangaroo show. Of course, the jazz audience is well-familiar with his work, considering the bulk of his recorded output dating back to the 1940s.

The New York Times story made us think of him as something of an aesthetic and ascetic, someone who lived modestly and in service to his art. Of course, this notion is completely false. Jones was anything but a recluse, traveling and performing late into his life. And he certainly wasn’t invisible to the jazz audience considering the sizable extent of his recording career, especially in his senior years, not to mention a life-long commitment to live performance .

The whole affair made us realize the power of printed stories, the importance of complete context and how much our conception of artists is connected to what we wish they were. It’s important to connect the music and the musician but it is also important to separate the two as well. As to the former, here’s hoping someone somewhere heard a full accounting from Mr. Jones  regarding his formative years in Detroit, his stints with Hot Lips Page and Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, his role of accompanist for great vocalists, his ability to record with all kinds of musicians (remember the Great Jazz Trio when he worked with Tony Williams, Buster Williams and Al Foster among many others?) his views on what’s changed between 1945 and 1995. As for the latter, here’s hoping I can find my copy of Hank Jones Live at Maybeck Recital Hall.–Cabbage Rabbit

The Rabbit has long complained that Keith Jarrett’s standards trio, fine as it is, limited the pianist. Maybe that ’s because the Rabbit was one of those “hippies,” as one reviewer described his audience, who found salvation in Jarrett’s early solo work, beginning in 1971 with Facing You and continuing through Solo Concerts and The Koln Concert, albums we played again and again to hear the sheer weight of Jarrett’s wide-ranging improvisational creativity. The size of the massive Sun Bear Concerts (six CDs) left us a bit cold, as if ego had replaced accomplishment, something suggested back in ’73’s three- LP Solo Concerts with the inclusion of endless European applause that seemed to eat up more vinyl than the music.  While the trio work seemed, after a few releases,  all of a sort, I always found something to like, if not love. His solo work was another matter, as if the connection he was able to make with his trio mates was turned inward to connect with himself.  When Radiance was released in 2002, Jarrett, having grappled successfully with health problems, again found a way to go beyond.

Released last fall, Testament may be Jarrett’s most expansive solo package, covering the full range of his styles and approaches without over-indulgence. The three-CD set,  holds two full concerts recorded within days of each other at the end of 2008, one at Paris’s Salle Pleyel,  the other at London’s Royal Festival Hall.  Jarrett explores free forms and dissonant counterpoints, grand harmonic themes and rollicking, gospel-influenced anthems. He swings and sails, even when creating Rachmaninovian lushness. Ranging across the entire keyboard for full effect, his play can be deep and dense one moment, light and ethereal the next. The pieces tend to be shorter than in his previous solo work and each seems to find context in the larger program. Numbered in Roman numerals, neither concert is so long or self-absorbed that you’ll be buried in its weight (as I was by Sun Bear).

The joys of solo Jarrett come of evolution. His ability to spontaneously create themes and then grace them with variation makes us focus on every note. Not only do lines evolve but rhythms as well. His phrases, especially in the more free form pieces, are never cut-and-dry but meander seamlessly, usually towards unexpected conclusions. This is something missing from his trio play and is a good part of what makes the pianist so unique. His ability to climb his way to some precarious perch and then lower himself out of it is truly amazing. He is a master of conflict and resolution.

It’s hard to find anything here to criticize. Only the last  cut from the London concert “Part XII,” fails to strike its rhythm, turning from a warm, major -key theme into a stomp and shout gospel-like close. If Jarrett’s conviction doesn’t exactly make believers of us, at least he won the audience. Their applause at the tune’s conclusion, probably the concert’s conclusion as well, goes on and on.–Cabbage Rabbit

In the failed-males-sabotaging-their-own-lives genre of storytelling,  sub-genres abound. The latest variation takes its cues from our on-going economic conditions; guys lose their jobs and go into free fall as does Matthew in Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets.

Sam Lipsyte’s take on this theme finds Milo Burke (this is a book with a number of strangely-named characters, for effect we assume) laid off from his job as a development officer at an obscure private college in New York, otherwise known as Mediocre University. The usual complication ensue: he can’t pay his bills, his wife may be fooling around and his kid begins to treat him with distrust. How his life unravels and how it loosely ties back up into a new knot, square to half-hitch, makes Lipsyte’s tale stand out from the kind of story we’ve heard too many times. Statistically, happy endings may be on the increase. But they’re still in the minority. Frustration, as it is in The Ask, seems the theme of the day.

Frustration is the source of much of the book’s humor as well as its dividing line. Readers who feel only frustration with Milo’s situation, his inability to (mostly) take things seriously, his appetite for porn, doughnuts and turkey wraps, and, especially, his desire to be more a naughty boy than he is, will find the book frustrating. Those who enjoy Lipsyte’s satiric take on fund raising, his celebration of self-loathing and the digs at the egoism of the rich, powerful  and unfaithful will find joy in those  same frustrations.

That this is a book about America’s descent into meaninglessness  is apparent from the first page. Horace, the forever-office temp who turns capre diem into a slacker anthem, defines our country as “a run-down and demented pimp” whose “whoremaster days are through.” What’s left? “Now our nation slumped in the corner of the pool hall, some gummy coot with a pint of Mad Dog and soggy yellow eyes, just another mark for the juvenile wolves. ” “‘We’re the bitches of the First World,’” Horace declares.

Of course, our hero must take issue. “That’s a pretty sexist way to frame a discussion of America’s decline, don’t you think? Not to mention racist,” Milo counters, apropos  to nothing. Lipsyte, in classic satiric form, has defined the current state of discussion in the U.S.: real questions hounded by cliched, knee-jerk reactions, be they claims of  discrimination, outcries of deficit spending or paens to free enterprise.  You want to discuss details? Climb over this first.

It’s no coincidence that the metaphoric complaints come from a guy named  Horace, that our doofus hero is named Milo or that the woman who holds power over them both is a big-bosomed, crack-whore’s daughter named Vargina (the “r” inserted after naming, Lipsyte tells us, by a sympathetic nurse). Side twists in this satiric corkscrew include  four-year-old son Bernie’s day care center, Happy Salamander, run by some  “young people with fancy education degrees and a tin of Tinker Toys” who operate under a “dense, pedagogical manifesto.” Then there’s a deck carpenter’s pitch for a Food Channel-styled program about death-row inmates’ last meal entitled “Dead Man Dining.” And don’t forget Milo’s weird parents, living and dead. There’s a lot here that’s funny in a sort of sad way.

The plot is simple enough. After losing his job for offending the art student daughter of a deep-pockets donor (”You made his daughter doubt herself, artistically. He had to buy her an apartment in Copenhagen so she could heal”), Milo is asked back to help secure a donation from a former college buddy named Purdy. Irony here is that Purdy asked Milo to join his fist-over-hand money-making ventures right out of school. Milo chose to pursue his art instead. Purdy has a troubled, disabled Iraq War-veteran son. Purdy has chosen Milo to be a sort of go-between, shuttling bribe money and generally keeping an eye on the son. The son, of course, stays anything but quiet.

The reward in all this? Possibly a huge endowment for the university which would mean Milo gets his job back. With money, the family stays together. Happy ending.

As Lydia Millet points out in her review of the book in The New York Times, true satire is rare in today’s literature, but pervasive in such vehicles as The Colbert Report and The Onion. Maybe that’s because literature demands more than just funny. And Lipsyte, plenty funny, provides it, not just making fun of certain character types and closely-held beliefs (meritocracy) bur raising real ethical, existential questions.

So what’s the larger target here? It’s certainly not men like Milo. Much of what happens to him is out of his control –  almost as much as is under his control — and we can’t help feel sympathetic for the sap. Yet Milo is more than some Gulliver, a vehicle to lampoon everything else. Maybe the real target of Lipsyte’s satiric skills is the men-sabotaging-their-own-lives genre itself. True or not, Lipsyte has given the form new life, all because he didn’t take it that seriously.–Cabbage Rabbit

Fortune magazine has allegedly rejected a cover illustration that Chris Ware provided. Check it out…seems it might strike a little too close to home for the pro-finance cheerleaders at Fortune. Our favorite part of the drawing? The chopper dropping cash on the 500 edifice? The Chinese off-loading dollars? Or that tea pot aboil, surrounded by bulbous, flag-waving figures? It’s hard to see all the details, even in the enlargement. Surely some capitalist will see a profitable poster opportunity here. That is, if the Fortune attorneys will allow it.–Cabbage Rabbit

With the premier this Sunday (April 11) of Treme, HBO’s new dramatic series on post-Katrina jazz in New Orleans, the Rabbit reprints his feature from the 2006 Playboy Jazz Festival program, published in June of that year (some nine months after the disaster) that focused on the heroic and self-sacrificing efforts to save New Orleans music scene. Note to friends with HBO: What are you doing Sunday night? (At left: Official poster of the 2010 New Orleans Jazz Festival; “Congo Square 2010: ‘Say Uncle, ‘ A portrait of Lionel Batiste” by Terrance Osborne”

Goin’ Home: Jazz Returns to New Orleans

by Bill Kohlhaase

–One of my pleasantest memories as a kid growing up in New Orleans was how a bunch of us kids, playing, would suddenly hear sounds. It was like a phenomenon, like the Aurora Borealis…music could come on you any time like that. The city was full of the sounds of music…”–Danny Barker quoted in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff”s “Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told By the Men Who Made It” (Dover)

Jazz is a citizen of the world. But its home will always be New Orleans.

Sure New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, not to mention hundreds of other cities around the globe, have given the music a place to hang its hat, to freshen up, to come out swinging. They’ve given it progeny. But New Orleans is where jazz was conceived, where it was born. The city has produced an endless stream of famous musicians, from Louis Armstrong to the Marsalis brothers as well as hosts of lesser known but important artists from Buddy Bolden to Narvin Kimball. New Orleans is the jazz world’s heart and soul.

Hurricane Katrina struck deep at that heart. To jazz fans, it was as if somebody had gone after their mother. As the horror stories from along the Gulf Coast began to sink in, lovers of the music, people in and out of New Orleans to whom jazz is life itself, began to ask what about the musicians? What about the clubs? What about the history?

News of the hurricane’s cultural devastation was slow to follow the headlines. Good news was tempered by bad. Though 80 per cent of the city ended up under water, many of the city’s oldest areas, from Bywater to the French Quarter to St. Charles Avenue in Uptown and Carrolton were left intact. But much of the Ninth Ward including the historic Holy Cross neighborhood, were in shambles. Musicians survived but they were scattered across the country, some with no plans or means of returning.  Clubs in the French Quarter reopened some few weeks after the hurricane. But many of them made do with rock and cover bands or no music at all. Preservation Hall survived with minimal damage. Yet, with so many musicians displaced and no audience, it stayed closed for months.

It seemed then that jazz in New Orleans might never recover. But today, with the annual Jazz Fest and French Quarter Music festivals behind us, with the reopening of Preservation Hall, with musicians returning to the city to play community events in the  streets and clubs and parks and churches, with dozens of organizations and thousands of people dedicating themselves to the cause of music in New Orleans, there is hope. The city may never be the same. But its musical spirit survives.

That spirit permeates American culture. It exists, not just in hundreds of recordings and contemporary performances of New Orleans musicians, but in all the arts, visual and written.  The city, as favorite son Wynton Marsalis has often explained, is “the original melting pot” with its mix of Spanish, French, British, West African and American people.  New Orleans jazz, as Marsalis preaches, “objectifies the fundamental principles of American democracy.”  It is not about the blues but about triumph over the blues. Its spirit resides in community and, as anyone who’s heard the Preservation Hall Jazz Band or attended a jazz funeral will attest, is all about celebration.

“New Orleans music has always been about overcoming adversity,” says Preservation Hall director and bassist Ben Jaffe. “Even during life’s most painful times, New Orleans has found a way to discover the joy in life. There’s no place, no music like it.”

Clarinetist, New Orleans native and professor of African-American music at Xavier University, Dr. Michael White, knows this joy. When he first heard the recorded music of legendary clarinetist George Lewis, sounding “like everything it meant to live in New Orleans,” his life changed. White was an upstart kid when he played his first public performance in Jackson Square with trumpeter Thomas “Kid” Valentine, a contemporary of Louis Armstrong. That experience set him on a course that hasn’t changed since.

“New Orleans is the music’s spiritual center,” White declares. “It has a magical quality. Maybe it comes from the West African tradition, but there’s something in the music that’s very powerful, that can change lives. The spirit of this music can make you reinterpret your life, it makes you feel liberated, it gives you a true sense of freedom.”

It didn’t take long for that spirit to assert itself in the aftermath of Katrina. The jazz community came together just three weeks after the disaster in the “Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert,” a nationally-televised event from New York’s Lincoln Center which raised over $2 million in a single night to help New Orleans area musicians and musical organizations. Money continues to come in from sales of the concert recording on Blue Note Records.

The good news, like a cornet solo, has since continued to build. Early this year, it was announced that the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, spurred by support from Festival Productions and AEG Louisiana Productions, as well as major corporate sponsorship from Shell Oil Company, would go on as usual, putting an end to rumors that one of America’s largest and most important musical gatherings would disappear. Other corporate sponsors–a list ranging from American Express to New Orleans food producer Zatarain’s–jumped on board. Despite the exodus of local musicians and a host of big names including Paul Simon, Bob Dylan and Ani DiFranco, the somewhat trimmer Festival announced that 90 per cent of its acts would be from Louisiana.

Charitable efforts blossomed. Within days of the disaster, Jaffe and his wife Sarah founded the New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund. “I started getting calls right away from musicians asking about money, asking about work. We moved the guys in our band to New York and it became apparent just what had been lost. Five of the nine members came in borrowed clothes. They couldn’t even access their ATM accounts. They’d lost their homes, their cars, their instruments; everything. I knew that we were in a unique position to help the music community.”

By of the end of April when this story was written, the Relief Fund had collected nearly $1 million and had distributed some $600,000 to some 800 musicians. Preservation Hall reopened during Jazz Fest, with a benefit for the Fund. “Every day there’s a little more hope,” Jaffe says.

Late last year, word came that Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. had partnered with Habitat For Humanity to build a “Musicians Village” of 81 homes in the upper ninth ward for displaced musicians. (Habitat is building some 300 homes in the area). The Village will also be the site of the “Ellis Marsalis Center For Music,” a gathering place for the musical community with performance spaces and recording facilities. President Bush visited the site in April and the Dave Matthews Band recently offered a $1.5 million challenge grant to the Village in the hopes of spurring further donations. At press time, three homes had been completed and the Village’s first residents were scheduled to move in sometime during May.

The loss of housing is one of New Orleans’ biggest problems and the toll on its musicians has been high. A Wall Street Journal article in April claimed that dozens of the better known musicians, from Cyril Neville to percussionist Bill Summers, we’re forced to leave the city and didn’t intend to move back. Many said the pay was better elsewhere. New Orleans’ loss was the rest of America’s gain.

It’s not the first time that New Orleans has seen an exodus of its musical talent. It happened in 1917 when the United States Navy shut down the Storyville district and its bordello-based nightlife. Jazz musicians started working the riverboats that carried them north. But the music went on in New Orleans, seeping into the culture in the form of parades, community concerts and even funerals. Housing, such as it was, remained for the ambitious musicians who stayed back and were willing to subsidize their income with day jobs.

With so many homes and businesses destroyed, things are different now. Even if their homes stand, their incomes have vanished. “It’s very important to the culture of the city to get the musicians back,” says Dr. White. “Without them, the soul and spirit of the tradition are gone.”

White’s own story illustrates how difficult the situation is. He evacuated his mother and an aunt to Houston where they remain. The shell of his house, located “right on the canals” is still standing but uninhabitable. He lost a priceless collection of jazz recordings, historical instruments and memorabilia in the deluge.  Between ever-changing bureaucratic rules and insurance company foot-dragging, he’s in a state of limbo that finds him commuting between Houston to take care of his relatives and New Orleans where he works. “We just don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “We keep hearing proposals, rumors of buyouts. I try not to go back to the house when I’m in town. It’s just too depressing. If it weren’t for the music, I would be coming back at all.”

Indeed, when it comes to musicians, New Orleans loss has been other cities’ gain. The pianist, Willie Tee Turbinton, once a fixture at Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club has moved off to New Jersey where he is an artist in residence at Princeton University. The pianist Henry Butler has move to the Denver area. Some members of Los Hombres Caliente have set up shop in Portland, effectively splintering the band.

Housing is not the only problem. Musicians need the opportunity to make a living. That’s the goal of Bring It On Home, a grass roots organization designed to create performance opportunities. The group was founded by guitarist-banjo-player and leader of The Creole Jazz Serenaders, Don Vappie, cultural historian Milly Vappie and community activist Bo Gallup.

“When I got back home after the hurricane,” says musician and Louisiana native Vappie, “I realized that it wasn’t just houses that were destroyed, the work in the region was gone as well. The clubs were gone, the casino gigs were gone, the convention gigs. So we came up with the simple idea of subsidizing performances, creating jobs for musicians getting some into their pockets. If there’s enough work, the guys will come back.”

Under the auspices of the St. Tammany Art Association, the group started with out-of-pocket expenses to sponsor fundraisers in Bogue Falya Park last fall and during Mardi Gras. Their “Rent Party,” with some 25 local musicians held in April at the relocated Howlin’ Wolf club, raised tens of thousands of dollars and brought offers to take the Rent Party on the road. Documentary film-maker Glen Pitre was there with a crew to record the event for an upcoming PBS special

The area’s clubs are again embracing jazz even if doing so at a loss. Snug Harbor, once the performance home of pianist Ellis Marsalis, is back on line as is the Funky Butt and the Home Court Café with its traditional jazz. Zea’s Rotesserie hosts Bring It On Home events two nights a week. Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club is hosting music again, though it’s lost its headliner. “You can still go out and hear live music in New Orleans any day of the week,” says Jaffe.

Tipitina’s, one of New Orleans most active clubs over the last 40 years, has formed its own foundation dedicated to finding housing for returning musicians, restoring their homes and putting instruments into the hands of music students. Fats Domino, whose rescue put focus on the New Orleans music scene, announced that the proceeds of his new release, “Live & Kickin’” will go to the Foundation. During daylight hours, the club serves as a community center for musicians, a place where they can learn business skill and network with other music professionals. Habitat For Humanity recently hosted an application workshop there for musicians interested in housing opportunities in its Musicians Village.

Clubs aren’t the only businesses struggling to survive. New Orleans-based recording companies also took a hit from the storm. Jaffe reports that Preservation Hall Records lost much of its inventory and all of its employees due to relocation. “[The label] is still up and running but we’ve had to pare it back severely. Almost all of our releases have been pushed back.”

New Orleans most visible jazz label, Basin Street Records, home to Dr. White, Los Hombres Caliente, Kermit Ruffins, Henry Butler, Jason Marsalis and others has faced even harsher circumstances. The company lost some 15,000 CDs, its offices and everything in them. Most of its staff relocated out of the city. Still, label founder Mark Samuels sees a silver lining. “The hurricane put the music and our artists in the spotlight. Irvin [Mayfield] was on ‘Larry King Live’, there have been segments on ‘Good Morning America’, we’ve been interviewed by the New York Times, the Wall St. Journal and USA Today. The exposure’s been unbelievable.”

Trumpeter Mayfield, who lost his father to Katrina, heads one of the most far-reaching of the organizations trying to keep the spirit of the Bayou City’s jazz alive. His 16-piece New Orleans Jazz Orchestra serves as a vehicle to bring the tradition to students and audiences around the world. Mayfield has also helped raise money for other relief organizations, notably The Recording Academy’s MusiCares Hurricane Relief Fund. Mayfield’s commitment is not just to jazz, but an entire culture.

Reasons to be concerned for that culture remain. Dr. Thomas Brothers, associate professor of music at Duke University and the author of the recent book “Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans” (W.W. Norton & Company) says the future of jazz in New Orleans is at a turning point. “New Orleans has been, for the entire 20th century, the most important city for vernacular music in the country.  That status is in real danger right now.  My great fear is that a century from now some musicologist will look back on Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and see that it caused the end of New Orleans as a very special place for music.”

But the resolve in New Orleans remains high and people are taking inspiration from its music. “Improvisation is a central characteristic of the New Orleans sound,” says Dr. White. “Everything has changed in New Orleans so it’s time to take a cue from the music, to improvise, to dance around the things life has thrown in front of us. The New Orleans jazz funeral is a great metaphor. The music is slow and somber, until the body is laid to rest, then the music turns uptempo and becomes joyous. It celebrates the person going on to a greater reward. Life as we know it has died in New Orleans. It’s time now to celebrate the new life, the transition, that from here things can only get better.”