Believe it or not, this is a real commercial for a real mobile home company in Alabama. Awesome.

OMFG. I came.

In a recent interview with USA Today, Nicholas Sparks had plenty to say. Not only did the sentimental hack compare his storytelling to that of Ernest Hemingway, he then went on to spew some serious fightin’ words about Cormac McCarthy – you know, the man who is arguably the greatest living American writer out there (Philip Roth and Don DeLillo probably the only other acceptable competitors for that title).

“Horrible,” Nicholas Sparks said about McCarthy’s masterpiece, Blood Meridian. “This is probably the most pulpy, overwrought, melodramatic cowboy vs. Indians story ever written.”

They’re the kind of words that leave you without much to say, rather just a confused and uncomfortable laugh, as if there is some kind of joke there you aren’t in on. I suppose reading those words was worth it though, just to see Roger Ebert putting Sparks in his place on his blog:

To be sure, I resent the sacrilege Nicholas Sparks commits by even mentioning himself in the same sentence as Cormac McCarthy. I would not even allow him to say “Hello, bookstore? This is Nicholas Sparks. Could you send over the new Cormac McCarthy novel?” He should show respect by ordering anonymously.

Sparks’s words might be infuriating, if they weren’t so laughable. I can see McCarthy shrugging indifferently when told about this and saying with his trademark mild-mannered voice: “Who?”

I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

-from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Welcome to the second edition of “What I’ve Been Reading,” where I share with you, well, what I’ve been reading – and where you can feel comfortable sharing with the rest of the world what you’ve checked out of your local library to help you drift off into someone else’s world. Recommendations are welcome and any thoughts on the books I’ve been reading, of course, are welcome also. Maybe we can even get some discussion going.

On the Road (1957, The Original Scroll)
Author: Jack Kerouac
Synopsis: “Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West Twentieth Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long, single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper that he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll, this document is among the most significant, celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary American literary history. It represents the first full expression of Kerouac’s revolutionary aesthetic, the identifiable point at which his thematic vision and narrative voice came together in a sustained burst of creative energy. It was also part of a wider vital experimentation in the American literary, musical, and visual arts in the post-World War II period.”
Star Rating: * * * *

Plainsong (1999)
Author: Kent Haruf
Synopsis: “In the same way that the plains define the American landscape, small-town life in the heartlands is a quintessentially American experience. Holt, Colo., a tiny prairie community near Denver, is both the setting for and the psychological matrix of Haruf’s beautifully executed new novel. Alternating chapters focus on eight compassionately imagined characters whose lives undergo radical change during the course of one year. … Walking a tightrope of restrained design, Haruf steers clear of sentimentality and melodrama while constructing a taut narrative in which revelations of character and rising emotional tensions are held in perfect balance. This is a compelling story of grief, bereavement, loneliness and anger, but also of kindness, benevolence, love and the making of a strange new family.”
Star Rating: * * * * 1/2

The Sportswriter (1986)
Author: Richard Ford
Synopsis: “Ralph Bascombe, the brooding antihero here, is not a Walter Matthaustyle, cigar-smoking sportswriter. Rather he resembles John Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom (sans cynicism). Bascombe has decided in his ‘mid-life crisis’ years to write heartwarming articles for a glossy sports magazine, and in the literal world of sportswriting, he has found a way to avoid life’s ‘searing regret’ without sacrificing its mysteries. In fact, Ralph is comfortable all around, living an ordinary, invisible existence in the ‘muted and adaptable’ landscape of a New Jersey suburb. He has two lovely children, buddies in the Divorced Men’s Club and occasional romps in the sack with a buxom nurse. Then comes a crisis, with a narrative that becomes an odyssey through an extraordinary Easter week of death and renewal that brutally challenges Ralph’s fragile optimism.”
Star Rating: * * * * *

A Piece of My Heart (1976)
Author: Richard Ford
Synopsis: “Ford’s mesmerizing first novel is the story of two godless pilgrims. Robard Hewes has driven across the country in the service of a destructive passion. Sam Newell is seeking the missing piece of himself. When these men converge, on an uncharted island in the Mississippi, each discovers the thing he’s looking for–amid a conflagration of violence that’s as shocking as it is inevitable.”
Star Rating: * * * *

The Ghost Writer (1979)
Author: Philip Roth
Synopsis: “A middle-aged writer recalls his younger self. At 23, Nathan Zuckerman has had four stories published and a small, flattering Saturday Review up-and-coming-author profile… As genuine and polite as he seems, Zuckerman has already hurt his family with his autobiographical art and ruined his relationship with adultery and honesty. Visiting his reclusive idol…, the writer watches himself watching himself and attempts to confront his work and life. Instead he finds himself turning reality into metafiction. … Philip Roth is the master of the uncomfortable, and his alter ego a connoisseur of self-involvement, self-loathing, and self-examination.”
Star Rating: * * *

—–
February Edition

As far as I am concerned, no one can rock quite like Dave Grohl. Whether leading the show with the Foo Fighters or passionately (and comically) destroying the drums with Them Crooked Vultures (concert review), the man is not only a musical genius, but a born entertainer. In my house, when a Foo Fighters album drops, it’s an event and as the release date approaches, anticipation grows to almost unbearable levels.

So, I’m pretty excited to hear that Dave is getting back to work with the Foo Fighters in September to work on their follow up to 2007′s Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace – and this time, they’ll be going back to their harder rock roots and bringing former Nirvana producer Butch Vig on board to help out.

“It’s the first album the two of us have made together in 20 years,” Dave told BBC. “There’s something that Butch does that helps a song become a bigger song. At this point I just want to rock. We’ve done a lot of acoustic stuff, the last couple of records have had a lot of pianos and mandolins. This one, I just want it to be on ten. We’re going to do it in my garage. It’s just a garage, it’s got junk and a refrigerator in it.”

Dave went on to say that while on tour for their last album, they wrote enough material to immediately put out another album, but they knew that meant another immediate tour and after years and years on the road (and with Dave having a recent newborn), they decided they needed a break. They are looking forward to getting back to work though and doing things the old-fashioned way.

“The way you make an album dictates the way it sounds,” Dave explained. “One of my favourite records we made was our third one which we made in my basement in Virginia. We had sleeping bags that we nailed on the wall for sound proofing. The general vibe on that record is really comfortable. I’d got upstairs and make chilli and come downstairs and do a vocal on a couch. It’s the same idea. To me it’s about switching up the process, we’ve been using pro tools and all that computer stuff the last couple of records. We’re putting that stuff in the closet and getting our old tape machines out so that we can just do it like we used to do it.”

Awesome. I can’t wait. In the meantime, I’m glad I have the recent Them Crooked Vultures album (and the memories of being front row to see them a few months ago) to hold me off.

p.s. I totally snapped that photo of Dave Grohl that you see above. He sweat on me.

Here I go, totally man crushin’ again.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”

-from On the Road by Jack Kerouac

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.

-from Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

One of my favorite bands will finally release their third album, after closing in on three years since their sophomore release. The label hasn’t been announced yet, but Pitchfork has revealed that Band of Horses is dropping their latest album, titled Infinite Arms, on May 18. Below are their scheduled tour dates, none of which are in my area, so hopefully I can line up a short vacation with one of the days that they are playing.

You can expect to be updated on anything and everything related to this – including single releases – as soon as we find out. In the meantime, listen to some of their older stuff, via their MySpace.

03-15 Boulder, CO – Fox Theater
03-16 Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre
03-18 Austin, TX – Stubbs BBQ
03-19 Austin, TX – Central Presbyterian Church
04-08 Paris, France – La Fleche D’or
04-09 Brussels, Belgium – Orangerie
04-10 Rotterdam, Netherlands – Motel Mozaique
04-12 London, England – Koko
04-14 Cologne, Germany – Kulturkirche
04-16 Oslo, Norway – Rockefeller
04-17 Gothenburg, Sweden – Tradgarn
04-18 Copenhagen, Denmark – Vega
04-23 Raleigh, NC – Walnut Creek Amphitheater *
04-24 Raleigh, NC – Walnut Creek Amphitheater *
04-27 Gainesville, FL – University of Florida’s Rion Ballroom
04-28 Miami, FL – The Fillmore
04-29 Orlando, FL – House of Blues
05-01 New Orleans, LA – Jazzfest
05-30 Bend, OR – Les Schwab Amphitheater #
05-31 George, WA – Sasquatch
06-05 Bangor, Ireland – Ward Park !
06-09 London, England – Roundhouse
06-12 Glasgow, Scotland – Bellahouston Park !
06-19 Toronto, Ontario – Olympic Island $
09-25 Los Angeles, CA – Greek Theatre

* with Widespread Panic
# with She & Him
! with Snow Patrol
$ with Pavement, Broken Social Scene

As a writer:

Would you rather live out the rest of your life in total obscurity, poverty, and despair, only to have the significance of your work discovered posthumously, thus rendering your relative immortality and importance in literature?

OR

Would you rather live out the rest of your life with international fame and fortune and no worries, but have your writing crumble to complete irrelevance after your death?

Why?

I read a great article this morning titled “Ten rules for writing fiction,” where they asked a handful of authors their “personal dos and don’ts” and I have to share it. I’m only going to post here a small bit of the article, but for anyone that is serious about writing fiction, the entirety is a must read. Here is part one of the article and here is part two. There is some great advice here.

Neil Gaiman
1 Write.
2 Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.
3 Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.
4 Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.
5 Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.
6 Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.
7 Laugh at your own jokes.
8 The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

Read More

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

-from On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Those cigars, the fine clothes. I thought of good steaks, long rides up winding driveways that led to beautiful homes. Ease. Trips to Europe. Fine women. Were they that much more clever than I? The only difference was money and the desire to accumulate it. I’d do it too! I’d save my pennies. I’d get an idea, I’d spring a loan. I’d hire and fire. I’d keep whiskey in my desk drawer. I’d have a wife with size 40 breasts and an ass that would make the paperboy on the corner come in his pants when he saw it wobble. I’d cheat on her and she’d know it and keep silent in order to live in my house with my wealth. I’d fire men just to see the look of dismay on their faces.

-from Factotum by Charles Bukowski