Cannonball Read 10: Full of Life by John Fante

John Fante has long been one of my favourite authors. Virtually unknown throughout his life, Fante's work began to gain popularity in the 1970s when Black Sparrow Press republished his out-of-print work at the suggestion of Charles Bukowski. Subsequently, Fante's reputation slowly grew over the years and currently enjoys both critical acclaim and a significant cult following.

Ask The Dust, from Fante's Bandini Saga*, is his most famous novel (a fantastic review here). Similar to Dreams from Bunker Hill, the final Bandini book, both tell the story of a young writer, hot blooded, alone and impulsive, trying to make sense of himself in Los Angeles. As marvelous as these writings are, I have always enjoyed the semi-autobiographical stories that detailed Fante's life and relationship with his family. Two of my favourite Fante novels include The Brotherhood of the Grape and Wait Until Spring, Bandini. The latter - to my knowledge his only novel written in the third person - introduces us to Fante as Bandini, the young son of Italian parents, born into poverty in Colorado. The former sees Fante returning home as a man. Both explore the tense relationships he shared with his excessively devout and overly dramatic mother, as well as with his tough and cantankerous father. Truly the byproduct of both parents, Fante's novels span over decades examining these three characters, all of them bewildered by their differences, yet almost comically unaware of their similarities.

Full of Life is more overtly autobiographical than Fante's other works, as he dispenses with alter egos altogether. The novel opens on John Fante, a man of modest success, home owner, and father to be. One day Fante's very pregnant wife, Joyce, falls through the termite-infested first floor. Though she is unharmed, the Fantes find the price of repairs to be out of their means. As a result, Fante travels from Los Angeles to northern California to request his father's professional expertise. Initially enthusiastic at the notion, Fante quickly finds himself regretting his decision once arrived at his parents' home. The story then centres around Fante being forced to deal with his self pitying father's faux stoicism, as well as his hormonal wife.

Less agonizing and much lighter than the bulk of Fante's work, this is by no means his best novel. It may be his funniest, however. While it is not recommended to Fante newcomers, anyone who has any experience with the Bandini's will delight at this small wonder.

*In the United Kingdom a collection of Fante's novels have been published in recent years under the name "The Bandini Quartet". They include Wait Until Spring, Bandini; The Road To Los Angeles; Ask The Dust and Dreams from Bunker Hill. It is worth noting that The Road To Los Angeles was published posthumously. There is a reason for this: it's bad. Skip it and return to it only once you've completed the TRILOGY. It is not essential. In fact, check out The Wine of Youth instead, a collection of shorts that includes stories based on events written about in The Road To Los Angeles. Who takes care of you? I do, that's who. Happy New Year, sexy. Yeah, you.

Cannonball Read 9: Another Country by James Baldwin

James Baldwin's Another Country is a sprawling novel that details the lives of a group of musicians, writers and artists in 1950's Greenwich Village. Thrown right into a cold New York City night, the story begins with urgency, as we follow the young Rufus Scott wandering the dark city streets, broke and broken. Baldwin immediately draws the reader in, setting us on a bumpy and often harrowing path exploring interracial relationships, extramarital affairs, bisexuality, as well as self delusion and its consequences.

Baldwin began writing the novel in Greenwich Village in 1948. He completed it on a kitchen counter in Istanbul in 1962. From Paris he had traveled to Turkey, arriving in poor health, depressed, and feeling that he had lost sight of his aims as a writer. Carrying with him an "unpublishable manuscript" that was "ruining his life", Baldwin claimed the characters simply wouldn't speak to him. On the brink of suicide, his novel had literally almost killed him. Taken care of by friends, away from his tempestuous life and relationships, he managed to conclude his 14 years of torment.

Reading Another Country is a frustrating experience. It is, rather understandably, uneven. The first third of the novel is its strongest, ranking with some of the best writing I have ever read. As a whole, however, it is muddled, and even infuriating in its failure to live up to its full potential. Often brutally honest in its exploration of relationships, willful ignorance and jealousy, it remains an intense and uncomfortably familiar read. In fact, I found myself completely obsessed with it when I was reading it, but almost felt it too heavy an emotional burden to pick up again after several hours away from it. It is the first time I have had such an intense and turbulent relationship with a book. I feel entirely serious (and quite ridiculous) stating that I had an almost romantic relationship with it. I love it despite it's flaws and feel quite terrible pointing them out publicly.

An imperfect work, yes, this may nonetheless be the most important literary discovery I've made in years. I hope others may value Baldwin's work as I have. Whether they do or not, I very much look forward to reading every word he has ever had published.

Apologies

Deistbrawler and Eyvi Sprite, put your machetes away, cancel your flights, for I have survived. I am currently holed up in a small French village outside of Paris with an internet connection and the best Whiskey money can buy. You're more than welcome to stop by.

I found myself in a tiny airport on the outskirts of Stockholm's outskirts. I slept on steel tables, I fought drunken Vikings for scraps of bread, I glugged moonshine at the security gates and wrote a novella with an albino at dawn.

I spent several hours in Oslo airport as well. Norway is the way forward. Stockholm and Sweden are fantastic, but Oslo airport's book selection! I expected a good deal of Knut Hamsun, as he's local. But their small English language selection was better than all of Glasgow's libraries combined. Bukowski, Nabokov, Bret Easton Ellis, Murakami, Camus, Kundera and F. Scott Fitzgerald, to name but a few. I felt inclined to move there based on the airport shop's collection alone. But I was informed that that was not a good enough reason to relocate and start life anew. Perhaps not. This is not the first time my impulsive tendencies have been brought into question. As it happens, "So I can watch the whales on the beach" is not a good enough response to the question, "Why is it you want to move to Nova Scotia?". Nonsense. It's as good a reason as any.

So here I am, "sharing" on line. I hope everyone is well.

Okay, this is impulsive. I don't believe in lists, I don't believe in awards. It's crass and pointless. But I still really enjoy them. I don't have the time or the energy to sit around and compile my favourite films of the Aughts, in general or in specific genres. So here is a list of my five favourite cinematic actors of the Aughts. If you don't like it, make your own damn list.

5. Ryan Gosling



4. Vera Farmiga


3. Idris Elba


2. Patricia Clarkson


1. Peter Dinklage

Let The Right One Out

Dear Sweden,

Please let me leave. It's cold and dark and I can only buy 3.5% beer. I am very impressed with your snow storms, your rich culture and beautiful women. But I am cold. And I have not slept. And I want to go home. I have Cannonballin' to do and these little fingers are struggling to type.

Also, RyanAir is the worst thing to come out of Ireland since Bono.

Dear Readers,

If I have shown no signs of life by Wednesday, avenge death.

Love,

TSF

Cannonball Read 8: Innocent When You Dream: Tom Waits: The Collected Interviews Edited by Mac Montandon

I couldn't have been more than twelve years old when I first heard Tom Waits. I was watching MTV late one night when, from under a table in a dingy diner, a man appeared with a tiny guitar in his hands and belted out a song. I had no idea who this person was, or where he'd come from, but I was transfixed. Months passed and I sat up waiting, hoping to see the video again, a blank VHS ready in the machine. Finally, one night, the song came back on. I lunged towards the VCR and hit record. Immediately after the song ended I plugged the RCA chords that lead from the VCR into the tape deck and transferred the song onto an audio cassette.



The song was "I Don't Want To Grow Up", and it was unlike anything else I'd ever heard. I wanted to know more. I scoured the local record outlet for more of the man's work. The album that I wanted, Bone Machine, was too expensive. I searched through tens of modestly priced albums from the 70's and 80's with no idea where to start. Eventually, I settled on Rain Dogs, and, upon listening, was left confused and a little frightened at this eclectic mix of noise, beauty and brilliance. My musical tastes had been limited to the likes of Nirvana and Sonic Youth on the one hand, and Ice Cube and Wu Tang on the other. Already, these two genres were socially incompatible in my school. It was rock or Hip Hop. That was it. Angry, depressed and suffering the onset of puberty, I knew not which to chose, and rather resented the notion that a choice was necessary. Now I had Waits to contend with as well.

No one I knew had heard of this man. I kept him to myself and accumulated more of his albums as the years passed. I began noticing his songs increasingly being featured in cinema, popping up at the end credits of strange films I would come across on cable stations late at night. As the years drew on a few people I met started recognizing his name, though he was usually only referred to as the "guy with the gravelly voice". No one else got it. My mother even declared "Anybody that sings like that would just get laughed off stage" as I played "Dirt In The Ground" solemnly in my room. I did not care, the lyrics were as good as lyrics got.



Innocent When You Dream: Tom Waits: The Collected Interviews is certainly not a book that will appeal to non-Waits fans. In fact, while it is an enjoyable insight into the man, it's hardly required reading for his fans either. The most interesting thing about Waits has always been his music. I still got a kick out of a lot of it. It's interesting to see the perceptions of journalists change over the years as Waits' grows from scruffy outcast to cult icon. The change in Waits' approach to interviews is even more drastic, as he evolves from a young artist spinning wild yarns about his past, to a husband and father with a decidedly more direct and, increasingly, political outlook. Nonetheless, he still insists on meeting journalists miles away from the secret location of his home, often in greasy spoon diners, or unfashionable Chinese restaurants.

This started as a mistake. I recently traveled down to London and, on Sunday, found myself alone in a friend's flat. I picked this book off of the shelf, flicked through the first few pages and, about 4 hours later, put it down and fell asleep. I had no plans on reviewing it but, in the end, could not resist writing a few paragraphs about this man whose music has been such a huge part of my life for the last sixteen years.



EDIT*************** Just deal with it.







...finally...

Cannonball Read 7: Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the classic story of an amateur scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who succeeds in bringing life to a monster. Horrified by his creation, he abandons it. The monster, aware of nothing more than its own existence, searches for acceptance in a world repulsed and terrified by his appearance.

The story's genesis traces back to the volcanic summer of 1816 when an eighteen year old Shelley developed the idea after sharing ghost stories on a visit to Switzerland. Expanded from a short story, the novel was initially published anonymously and received a mostly negative critical reaction. Today, it will be greeted in much the same way. Dated by both style and pace, the book is often ponderous and repetitive. It hardly stands out as a great literary work on its own merit. Nonetheless, it's fascinating to delve into the source material of the now iconic creature, the monster of Frankenstein.

The story has changed drastically. Only a short few years after the novel's publication, playwrights struggled to translate the inner-monologue driven narrative to a visual medium. Subsequently, the story became increasingly sensationalized. For example, instead of the ambiguous chemical process Frankenstein employed to bring the monster to life in the novel, stage versions had electricity bolting into the creature, animating the grim collection of body parts. The character of Frankenstein, originally well-meaning, became increasingly corrupt, eventually morphing into the original Mad Scientist, along with his hunchbacked assistant Igor, a character also noticeably absent from the original story. But it is the monster that has changed the most drastically through the story's countless adaptations following the advent of cinema. Originally an eloquent creature of considerable intelligence, our modern monster has devolved into a lumbering zombie, inherently violent and mischievous.

It is the themes of the novel that resonate the most deeply to this day, however, as Shelley explores man's quest for knowledge, the harnessing of the elements, and our attempts at playing God. It taps into our unease over the ethical implications of genetic engineering and, most recently, the cloning of livestock. Yet it is ultimately the story of an even more universal theme: that of a man's obsession leading to his downfall.

Cannonball Read 6: Shibboleth: My Revolting Life by Penny Rimbaud a.k.a J.J. Ratter

"Whatever we do, we have to accept that our hopes and fears will be mercilessly exploited by those that have nothing better to offer than money."
Penny Rimbaud

Shibboleth: My Revolting Life is the autobiography of Crass founder, lyricist and drummer, Penny Rimbaud. Crass, perhaps one of the most influential rock groups in history, were a British punk band active throughout the late 70's and early 80's. Popularizing the anarcho-punk movement, Crass had an unquestionably significant impact on the punk scene philosophically, politically and aesthetically. As advocates of direct action, animal rights and environmentalism, the group became a minor thorn in the side of the Thatcher regime. This fact would lead to several encounters with authorities, and ultimately to Crass' members being tried under the Obscene Publications Act. While the book details Rimbaud's life from his childhood in London during the Second World War, through to his time as an art student and, later, teacher, the bulk of the book centres around the commune where Rimbaud spent decades of his life. Living with a variety of activists, artists and drifters, Rimbaud was involved in numerous creative and political endeavours throughout the years, though Crass remains the most notable.

Rimbaud is an intriguing figure who has lead a unique and fascinating life. A man of great intelligence and passion, his book nonetheless suffers as the result of his disjointed approach to storytelling. His non-sequential narrative, as well as his proclivity to flip from life event, political diatribe to philosophical musing, make for a frustrating read. Is this a memoir? A rant about the potential and/or limitations of revolutionary politics? A philosophical journey? It would appear to be a combination of all of the above. Thusly, it fails. This is compounded by a tendency to dryly list off the events of his life, rather than delving into any sort of detail that might engage the reader. Additionally, I often felt that Rimbaud's experiences were being listed to back up his ideology, rather than detailing how they organically led to his conclusions. My greatest criticism, however, is reserved for the almost comically pretentious descriptions that take over countless pages of this memoir. One particularly difficult section to stomach, detailing an early Crass gig, reads as follows:

"Sprays of alcohol burst in frothy trails from flying beer cans. Bodies surfed by on waves of grape and hop. Wild dancers dragged body to body, down onto the filthy floor in parodies of our fathers' violence. Touch on touch, in parodies of the awful coldness that had ripped us from our mothers' bodies. We heaved away at our adopted umbilical, sharing this moment of re-birth, ready to nurse each other's wounds, for, within this parody of violence, we realised that we loved each other."

The narrative deviates drastically as the book progresses. The central chapter, The Last of the Hippies, is the story of the death of Phillip Russell, a.k.a Wally Hope. Hope, a leading figure in the development of the Stonehenge Free Festival, was a close friend of Rimbaud's. Arrested on the commune where he sporadically resided, Hope was charged by local authorities for possession of a small amount of LSD and institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital. Cut off from contact with the outside world, he was administered a cocktail of experimental drugs, often by force, that ultimately destroyed him as a person. Ten weeks later he was unexpectedly discharged. He returned to the commune a broken human being. Shortly thereafter he died, asphyxiated by his own vomit. The death, ruled as suicide, had a profound effect on Rimbaud, who devoted a great deal of time and energy investigating the authorities alleged complicity in Hope's death.

Indeed, the tragedy of Hope's death is truly harrowing, and forms not just the core of Rimbaud's attitude towards authority and government, but also the emotional centre piece of the book. However, as effective as the inclusion of this devastating story may be, it also serves as another obstacle in identifying what the core of Rimbaud's book actually is.

I want to be more generous with this book than I have been. At times it was engrossing, intelligent and thought provoking. Nonetheless, it remained a frustrating and often pretentious mess. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anybody that isn't specifically interested in the anarcho-punk movement and/or radical politics in general. The book comes to a very strong end, however, and the last section is particularly engaging, albeit deeply depressing. Crass dissolves, Rimbaud abandons his creative ventures to take care of his dying parents, and the world we all live in fails to improve. Rimbaud, much like the reader, is left without answers.