Down and Out in New England: April 7-13

An end to a particularly stressful week at work led to a total collapse of my immune system for a couple of days. I managed to read more than I realized, though I don't think I really listened to any music and I missed Record Store Day. Bummer. I'm on the lookout for something really good to sink my teeth into - both on the page and on the turntable, so if you have any recommendations please send them in.

Books

• Mystery Train by Greil Marcus (finished): I really enjoyed Marcus' ambition and obvious intelligence. The Elvis chapter made up for the bizarre Randy Newman examination, and ultimately it's the type of genre-bridging cultural analysis that I really like when it's done well. I don't know that I particularly want to go back and try more Marcus now, though, as I still can't shake the feeling that he started to think he himself was one of these artists whose embodiment of freedom he finds so fascinating. As always with me, self-importance is the kiss of death.
  
• Tune In by Mark Lewisohn (continued): Roughly 150 pages into the tome, and John and Paul have finally met and Paul has joined The Quarry Men. This continues to be a pleasure to read, despite the fact that I don't consider myself a huge Beatles fan. It really is comparable to Robert Caro's work (though nothing can touch The Power Broker.)
  
• 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King (continued) - I'm at the point where I avoid reading this at night (and many of my previous complaints have been answered). This started slow, but once the vampire stuff really starts happening then King is really in his bag, and I started to remember what it was like reading his books as a kid. I don't care one bit for the characters, though, but it doesn't really seem to matter. I'm in.
  
• Laozi's Dao de Jing translated by Ken Liu (started) - I couldn't sleep the other night and, afraid to read 'Salem's Lot so late at night, I resolved to read the next item in my Kindle library, which happened to be this translation of the Tao te Ching/Dao de Jing that I had seen recommended highly somewhere or other. Most of my knowledge of the classical work comes from The Tao of Steve, so all I really remember is "Be without desire. Be excellent. Be gone." Turns out some of that isn't in the original...
  
  I could stand with a little more of submission to the Dao in my life, but it just seems so damn hard when there's other people counting on you. Still, I'm trying.

Articles and Episodes

• Backlisted - The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro: This was the best kind of Backlisted episode. It covered a book I own (or did at one point in time...) but haven't read, and it left me with a complete desire to read it as soon as possible. Ishiguro does Kafka while cosplaying as Bob Dylan is part of my takeaway, and that's really all I need to (re)buy a novel.
  
• The Rewatchables - True Lies: This is the podcast I turn to when I've burned through all my favorites, though I'm relatively selective about which ones I listen to. True Lies was a movie I saw multiple times in the theater when it came out, and it's thoroughly underrated to my mind. It took until listening to this episode, though, for me to realize the movie was directed by James Cameron right before he made Titanic. I consider myself pretty well-informed and aware of these things, but I was completely amazed by this discovery.
  
• Top Chef - S22:E05: A s0-so episode for me. Once again, a contestant is taken down by their seeming lack of knowledge about what has taken out past contestants time and again. "Oh, I know, I'll make risotto..." "Let's fry something a la minute for an outdoor event serving hundred of people..." "You make your food and I'll make mine and we'll figure out a concept later..."
  
• This Old House: I spent Friday night and Saturday sick in bed and watched what can only be termed as "a lot" of This Old House. I was in and out of sleep while it was on, so I have no idea what season it was or which city they were in, but it was one of the locations where they have Tommy teaching the apprentices how to do some things. I learned how to frame a porch, which I feel completely confident that I could never actually pull that off, and then family who "couldn't afford a big budget" shopped for semi-custom tiles for the mudroom. Kevin, the dope, was blown away by the computer because of course he was.
  
• "Gatsby's Secret" by Wesley Lowery (ContrabandCamp): Lowery relates Carlye V. Thompson's reading of The Great Gatsby as being about Gatsby's passing as white, and while it's an interesting thought experiment I don't think his argument really holds water. Part of Thompson's evidence is that Gatsby's race is never mentioned and he's described as "tanned" at one point. Thompson also hangs his hat on the fact that Trimalchio was a former slave in Petronius' Satyricon (and "Trimalchio Among the Ash Heaps" was an early rejected title of Fitzgerald's work), but I think it far more likely that this allusion – that, once again, is ultimately cut from the text – is a comment on class rather than one on race.
  
  Ultimately, Thompson's theory leaves me feeling like a cynical and limited high school student who says that the teacher is "reading too much into the book" – a feeling that I don't particularly enjoy. I could certainly be missing what Thompson claims is plainly there, but I don't see how Fitzgerald wouldn't have pointed it out directly at some later point in his life. I would absolutely watch a film version of this particular reading, though, as a new spin on the novel. It could be great if done well.