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"content": "\u003cp>You read enough books and you get real familiar, real quick, with a few things. One of these is the pervasive habit of underestimating an audience’s intelligence. Many authors seem to think that no plot point will be noticed, no emotional moment will make an impact, unless it is banged into the reader’s head with a sledgehammer and then lit with a giant flashing neon sign. Thankfully, from the first time I ever read an Ann Cummins short story, I knew she was not one of those. That was “Red Ant House,” it ran in a 2001 issue of \u003ci>McSweeney’s\u003c/i>, and I was immediately struck by the scrubbed raw, stark beauty of her prose. “Red Ant House” went on to appear in \u003cb>Best American Short Stories 2002\u003c/b>, and lent its title to her first book, a story collection. Now Ann Cummins has followed it up with \u003cb>Yellowcake\u003c/b>, a novel just as scrubbed raw and spare band beautiful as her shorter works, with nary a sledgehammer or neon sign in sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The title refers to both meanings of the term. The book centers around the lives of some aging men, former employees of a now-defunct uranium processing mill on Navajo land, in the border area between New Mexico and Colorado. Ryland Mahoney, the former foreman, is ill with emphysema. He no longer has the energy to do much except sit and think, and thus becomes the stationary hub around which his family and all the interlocking storylines spin out. Ryland’s wife Rosy, an almost terrifyingly capable, bustling, organized woman, runs the house. She keeps track of all her husband’s doctor appointments, baby-sits the grandkids, and collects documents to present at the constant meetings. In front of local politicos, mine representatives, Navajo tribal elders, and lawyers, Rosy makes the case for financial compensation for all the sick millworkers — of which there are many. Even as she does all this, she’s helping her daughter plan a wedding. (That’s where the other yellow cake comes in.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> It’s clear right off the bat that Ryland is a stand-up guy. The same cannot be said of his lifelong friend and former brother-in-law, Sam Behan. Sam was a drunk, a user, who carried on a long affair with a much younger Navajo woman, Alice Atcitty, at the same time he was married to Rosy’s sister Lily. His job required him to climb around all day on a huge pile of radioactive mine tailings: “Someplace there’s a photo of Sam on the catwalk they erected at the top of the pile, standing up there smoking a cigarette, on the clock, his face a study in indifference, Superman, to look at him.” Despite this, despite living in a home downwind from this same pile of tailings, and despite being an emotionally crippled and generally nasty piece of work, he came out healthy while Ryland’s lungs are “shriveled sacks,” working at half capacity. Sam took off to Florida years earlier, but when he comes back to town to watch Ryland and Rosy’s daughter get married, all sorts of long-buried resentments bubble back up to the surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve read two books in the last two months where the identity of a character’s father is a closely guarded, lifelong secret, revealed at a climactic moment. This is never how these things really go. In the real world, if someone has fathered a child he shouldn’t, it’s never REALLY a secret. It’s an elephant in the room, something everyone knows and doesn’t mention. So my admiration for Ann Cummins grew even more when she dealt with this situation so deftly. Midway through the book, Sam says something about his “kid.” He’s referring to Delmar Atcitty, Alice’s son, a wild, charismatic Navajo “half breed” fresh from prison, who we’ve previously met. You realize suddenly that, of course, Sam must be his dad: without realizing, you already knew.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are many stories in \u003cb>Yellowcake\u003c/b>, and Cummins jumps in and out of the character’s heads at will. The constant throughout, though, is that the women hold fast while the men fall apart. Delmar’s cousin Becky Atcitty holds down a good job at the bank, ferries around Delmar in her truck because he lost his license, and attends the same meetings that Rosy does — on behalf of her own dying father. It’s the wives, daughters, and mothers who come to all the meetings, helplessly trying to figure out what should be done for the decaying, poisoned mine and the decaying, poisoned people who ran it. Rosy’s sister Lily, so successful at creating a full life for herself after her cheating husband ran off, has to fight to keep it together when Sam comes back to betray her yet again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ann Cummins has an incredible gift for revealing character in tiny moments, glimpses, turns of phrase. “You’re my memory”, Ryland says to Rosy, whenever she reminds him of yet another meeting or medical procedure he’s forgotten. It’s a sentence freighted with resignation, dependence, sadness, love. It tells us far more about their relationship than a simple “I love you” ever could. The book ends with some wedding scenes, which were the only part of \u003cb>Yellowcake\u003c/b> that I really took issue with. Not even Ann Cummins, so skilled at avoiding the syrupy, can write a wedding reception scene without its becoming sugar-encrusted with gossipy aunts and cute flower girls. A few pages feel lifted straight from \u003cb>Steel Magnolias\u003c/b>. Blessedly, it’s only a brief lapse. She more than redeems herself with the depiction of the relationship between the long-absent Sam and his wary son. In one scene near the end, Delmar and Sam are charged with completing a very important and difficult task together. A lesser writer would have had the two men come to an understanding. They would have made peace, recognized one another’s failings, overcome their lifelong disagreements. But these two men, so similar in character, are too damaged and too resentful for something that simple to happen. Cummins knows this, and delivers a resolution that is totally unexpected, yet totally in character.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are almost no animals in this sun-and-radiation-blasted landscape, save a few notable exceptions. A group of “hobbled horses” used to graze on the lawns of the millworkers’ homes, right up to the kitchen windows. Both the houses and the horses are long gone. Ryland has a recurring dream about a fox he used to see running down the “garden path.” This was the mill’s nickname for a strip of concrete that ran between two leaching ponds: one full of caustic acid, the other of clean water. The animals and the protagonists have a lot in common. Without even realizing it, they’re negotiating a life-and-death balancing act, making some sort of life in a place that has become totally hostile to their nature. One can kick up a fuss, try to place blame and get compensation, but it’s not going to bring back the past, or heal what’s been damaged. This could have been an “issue” novel, \u003cb>The Jungle\u003c/b> for the 21st century. But Ann Cummins chose nuance and complex characterization over pounding away at environmental issues, a tactic that winds up revealing their effect in an even more human and devastating way.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>You read enough books and you get real familiar, real quick, with a few things. One of these is the pervasive habit of underestimating an audience’s intelligence. Many authors seem to think that no plot point will be noticed, no emotional moment will make an impact, unless it is banged into the reader’s head with a sledgehammer and then lit with a giant flashing neon sign. Thankfully, from the first time I ever read an Ann Cummins short story, I knew she was not one of those. That was “Red Ant House,” it ran in a 2001 issue of \u003ci>McSweeney’s\u003c/i>, and I was immediately struck by the scrubbed raw, stark beauty of her prose. “Red Ant House” went on to appear in \u003cb>Best American Short Stories 2002\u003c/b>, and lent its title to her first book, a story collection. Now Ann Cummins has followed it up with \u003cb>Yellowcake\u003c/b>, a novel just as scrubbed raw and spare band beautiful as her shorter works, with nary a sledgehammer or neon sign in sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The title refers to both meanings of the term. The book centers around the lives of some aging men, former employees of a now-defunct uranium processing mill on Navajo land, in the border area between New Mexico and Colorado. Ryland Mahoney, the former foreman, is ill with emphysema. He no longer has the energy to do much except sit and think, and thus becomes the stationary hub around which his family and all the interlocking storylines spin out. Ryland’s wife Rosy, an almost terrifyingly capable, bustling, organized woman, runs the house. She keeps track of all her husband’s doctor appointments, baby-sits the grandkids, and collects documents to present at the constant meetings. In front of local politicos, mine representatives, Navajo tribal elders, and lawyers, Rosy makes the case for financial compensation for all the sick millworkers — of which there are many. Even as she does all this, she’s helping her daughter plan a wedding. (That’s where the other yellow cake comes in.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> It’s clear right off the bat that Ryland is a stand-up guy. The same cannot be said of his lifelong friend and former brother-in-law, Sam Behan. Sam was a drunk, a user, who carried on a long affair with a much younger Navajo woman, Alice Atcitty, at the same time he was married to Rosy’s sister Lily. His job required him to climb around all day on a huge pile of radioactive mine tailings: “Someplace there’s a photo of Sam on the catwalk they erected at the top of the pile, standing up there smoking a cigarette, on the clock, his face a study in indifference, Superman, to look at him.” Despite this, despite living in a home downwind from this same pile of tailings, and despite being an emotionally crippled and generally nasty piece of work, he came out healthy while Ryland’s lungs are “shriveled sacks,” working at half capacity. Sam took off to Florida years earlier, but when he comes back to town to watch Ryland and Rosy’s daughter get married, all sorts of long-buried resentments bubble back up to the surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve read two books in the last two months where the identity of a character’s father is a closely guarded, lifelong secret, revealed at a climactic moment. This is never how these things really go. In the real world, if someone has fathered a child he shouldn’t, it’s never REALLY a secret. It’s an elephant in the room, something everyone knows and doesn’t mention. So my admiration for Ann Cummins grew even more when she dealt with this situation so deftly. Midway through the book, Sam says something about his “kid.” He’s referring to Delmar Atcitty, Alice’s son, a wild, charismatic Navajo “half breed” fresh from prison, who we’ve previously met. You realize suddenly that, of course, Sam must be his dad: without realizing, you already knew.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are many stories in \u003cb>Yellowcake\u003c/b>, and Cummins jumps in and out of the character’s heads at will. The constant throughout, though, is that the women hold fast while the men fall apart. Delmar’s cousin Becky Atcitty holds down a good job at the bank, ferries around Delmar in her truck because he lost his license, and attends the same meetings that Rosy does — on behalf of her own dying father. It’s the wives, daughters, and mothers who come to all the meetings, helplessly trying to figure out what should be done for the decaying, poisoned mine and the decaying, poisoned people who ran it. Rosy’s sister Lily, so successful at creating a full life for herself after her cheating husband ran off, has to fight to keep it together when Sam comes back to betray her yet again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ann Cummins has an incredible gift for revealing character in tiny moments, glimpses, turns of phrase. “You’re my memory”, Ryland says to Rosy, whenever she reminds him of yet another meeting or medical procedure he’s forgotten. It’s a sentence freighted with resignation, dependence, sadness, love. It tells us far more about their relationship than a simple “I love you” ever could. The book ends with some wedding scenes, which were the only part of \u003cb>Yellowcake\u003c/b> that I really took issue with. Not even Ann Cummins, so skilled at avoiding the syrupy, can write a wedding reception scene without its becoming sugar-encrusted with gossipy aunts and cute flower girls. A few pages feel lifted straight from \u003cb>Steel Magnolias\u003c/b>. Blessedly, it’s only a brief lapse. She more than redeems herself with the depiction of the relationship between the long-absent Sam and his wary son. In one scene near the end, Delmar and Sam are charged with completing a very important and difficult task together. A lesser writer would have had the two men come to an understanding. They would have made peace, recognized one another’s failings, overcome their lifelong disagreements. But these two men, so similar in character, are too damaged and too resentful for something that simple to happen. Cummins knows this, and delivers a resolution that is totally unexpected, yet totally in character.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are almost no animals in this sun-and-radiation-blasted landscape, save a few notable exceptions. A group of “hobbled horses” used to graze on the lawns of the millworkers’ homes, right up to the kitchen windows. Both the houses and the horses are long gone. Ryland has a recurring dream about a fox he used to see running down the “garden path.” This was the mill’s nickname for a strip of concrete that ran between two leaching ponds: one full of caustic acid, the other of clean water. The animals and the protagonists have a lot in common. Without even realizing it, they’re negotiating a life-and-death balancing act, making some sort of life in a place that has become totally hostile to their nature. One can kick up a fuss, try to place blame and get compensation, but it’s not going to bring back the past, or heal what’s been damaged. This could have been an “issue” novel, \u003cb>The Jungle\u003c/b> for the 21st century. But Ann Cummins chose nuance and complex characterization over pounding away at environmental issues, a tactic that winds up revealing their effect in an even more human and devastating way.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Positioning yourself in the forward half of the audience at a This Moment in Black History performance is like sitting in the front row of a Gallagher show without an umbrella, but with a much better payoff for your ‘participation’. It turns out that \u003ci>Bay Guardian\u003c/i> Music Editor Kimberly Chun was inadvertently kicked in the head by the very same lead singer that chose to hop into my chair with me. He holds a vendetta against Bay area music journalists, perhaps? No matter. Maybe we’re both sadists, because from what I can tell, we both rather enjoyed the rough treatment. This could be because the bands start to blend together after a while when you’re in the midst of four 13-hour days of music. If it takes a little of the old ultra-violence to command the crowd’s attention, then let me be the first moodge to take one in the yarbles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And speaking of rough treatment, the 25-foot RV my companion and I rented and drove in and parked just east of downtown each day was egged by some disgruntled locals, a gang of East Austin street toughs or quite possibly a certain Sixth City punk frontman. But other than that, the RV experience was a good one. It was easy to find parking each day, we had some measure of maneuverability for getting to some of the shows a little south of town and we had what amounted to a roving, sun-splashed studio for writing, editing photos and drinking wine. I would highly recommend it for would-be festivalgoers next year. Sadly the festival was not without its bumps for our contingent, as my companion lost her driver’s license midway through the festivities and had to have her passport overnighted. I’m looking at you for this one too, T.M.I.B.H!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Transportation issues aside, though South-by-Southwest was a frantic music-gulping success and an unforgettable spectacle, I share some of Kimberly’s frustration — expressed in her Guardian piece — that some of the bigger-name indie bands (Arcade Fire, New Pornographers, LCD Soundsystem) were nowhere to be found, and that I’m left considering a trip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.coachella.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Coachella\u003c/a> to catch them just one month after the biggest music extravaganza on the continent. But I look at South-by-Southwest, along with \u003ca href=\"http://cmj.com/index.html\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">CMJ\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.noisepop.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Noise Pop\u003c/a>, as a place to catch some of the up-and-comers before (or at least at the same time as) the music press and bloggers get a hold of them and make it near impossible to get tickets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the dust settled on the last two days of this year’s festival, there were a few more standouts to add to the list in my first post, \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/music/index.jsp?id=14580\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Crazy RV Music Adventure\u003c/a>, on the 2007 festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Already blogged to death, so just go see them:\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://myspace.com/datarock\">Datarock\u003c/a> — Playing \u003ca href=\"http://www.mezzaninesf.com/calendar.asp\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Mezzanine\u003c/a> March 29, 2006 — TONIGHT!\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://profile.myspace.com/theponys\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Ponys\u003c/a> — On a bill with Deerhunter at \u003ca href=\"http://12galaxies.inticketing.com/evinfo.php?eventid=14921\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">12 Galaxies\u003c/a> April 13, 2006.\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://profile.myspace.com/annuals\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Annuals\u003c/a> — Opening for Blonde Redhead at \u003ca href=\"http://www.bimbos365club.com/bands.html\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Bimbo’s\u003c/a> April 23 and 24, 2006.\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/menomena\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Menomena\u003c/a> — Coming to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.theindependentsf.com/june2007.htm\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Independent\u003c/a> June 9, 2007.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ripe for the plucking, but not coming to town any time soon:\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/apesandandroids\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Apes & Androids\u003c/a> — Eminently danceable, Apes & Androids’ spaced-out funk-and-soul sound dovetails nicely with their off-the-wall stage presence — headbands, velour and face paint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.arielpink.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Ariel Pink\u003c/a> — Definitely the most random and oddest act I witnessed at South-by-Southwest, which is saying a lot. A quick look at his influences on myspace is not possible, it requires quite a bit of scrolling. I heard Jackson Five at one point in Austin and Bauhaus soon after. What does petulant singer Ariel Rosenberg want to sound like next? I’m happy to stick around and find out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.themintchicks.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Mint Chicks\u003c/a> — Remember that lame-ass Cars reunion a few years ago with Todd Rundgren? Hopefully you skipped that. Now go see The Mint Chicks instead. It’s cheaper and they’ve got loads of that good ol’ youthful energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alela Diane – With soulful vocal chops akin to Gillian Welch or Emmylou Harris, and forthright and confident lyricism, Nevada City-born Alela Diane’s ongoing ascent simply cannot be doubted or stopped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://profile.myspace.com/micahphinson\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Micah P. Hinson\u003c/a> — For a spur-of-the-moment, stripped-down set, Abilene singer-songwriter Micah P. Hinson, with his full-bodied vocal, delivered a moving and sonically eloquent stunner of a performance, far more than just warming up the crowd for Daniel Johnston.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/odeath\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">O’Death\u003c/a> — Imagine if you will that Captain Beefheart broke into a pawn shop in Appalachia and made off with all the musical instruments. I doubt there are many music fans that couldn’t get behind this boisterous blend of punk, country, bluegrass and eccentricity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/healthmusic\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">HEALTH\u003c/a> — A soul-shaking sonic clamor with the random deviations of free jazz and the succinctness of the Minutemen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.twotonboa.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Two-Ton Boa\u003c/a> — If metal was more literate, more twistedly bipolar, and built around dynamic, haunting and evocative vocals instead of hiding behind guitar-hero posturing, it’s name would be Sherry Fraser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/marieesioux\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Mariee Sioux\u003c/a> — Part of the Grass Roots Records family, along with Alela Diane, Mariee Sioux picks out beautiful, smart folk ditties and delivers them like fellow Nevada City resident Joanna Newsom taken down a notch. What is in the water in that town?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the very least, after four long days in Austin, there are about 35-40 bands that I won’t have to clamor to see whenever they decide to embark on a West Coast tour. Alas, I’ll still be looking to the desert in late April and considering getting in line with the sweat-ringed throng out in Indio yet another year.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Positioning yourself in the forward half of the audience at a This Moment in Black History performance is like sitting in the front row of a Gallagher show without an umbrella, but with a much better payoff for your ‘participation’. It turns out that \u003ci>Bay Guardian\u003c/i> Music Editor Kimberly Chun was inadvertently kicked in the head by the very same lead singer that chose to hop into my chair with me. He holds a vendetta against Bay area music journalists, perhaps? No matter. Maybe we’re both sadists, because from what I can tell, we both rather enjoyed the rough treatment. This could be because the bands start to blend together after a while when you’re in the midst of four 13-hour days of music. If it takes a little of the old ultra-violence to command the crowd’s attention, then let me be the first moodge to take one in the yarbles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And speaking of rough treatment, the 25-foot RV my companion and I rented and drove in and parked just east of downtown each day was egged by some disgruntled locals, a gang of East Austin street toughs or quite possibly a certain Sixth City punk frontman. But other than that, the RV experience was a good one. It was easy to find parking each day, we had some measure of maneuverability for getting to some of the shows a little south of town and we had what amounted to a roving, sun-splashed studio for writing, editing photos and drinking wine. I would highly recommend it for would-be festivalgoers next year. Sadly the festival was not without its bumps for our contingent, as my companion lost her driver’s license midway through the festivities and had to have her passport overnighted. I’m looking at you for this one too, T.M.I.B.H!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Transportation issues aside, though South-by-Southwest was a frantic music-gulping success and an unforgettable spectacle, I share some of Kimberly’s frustration — expressed in her Guardian piece — that some of the bigger-name indie bands (Arcade Fire, New Pornographers, LCD Soundsystem) were nowhere to be found, and that I’m left considering a trip to \u003ca href=\"http://www.coachella.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Coachella\u003c/a> to catch them just one month after the biggest music extravaganza on the continent. But I look at South-by-Southwest, along with \u003ca href=\"http://cmj.com/index.html\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">CMJ\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.noisepop.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Noise Pop\u003c/a>, as a place to catch some of the up-and-comers before (or at least at the same time as) the music press and bloggers get a hold of them and make it near impossible to get tickets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the dust settled on the last two days of this year’s festival, there were a few more standouts to add to the list in my first post, \u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/music/index.jsp?id=14580\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Crazy RV Music Adventure\u003c/a>, on the 2007 festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Already blogged to death, so just go see them:\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://myspace.com/datarock\">Datarock\u003c/a> — Playing \u003ca href=\"http://www.mezzaninesf.com/calendar.asp\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Mezzanine\u003c/a> March 29, 2006 — TONIGHT!\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://profile.myspace.com/theponys\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Ponys\u003c/a> — On a bill with Deerhunter at \u003ca href=\"http://12galaxies.inticketing.com/evinfo.php?eventid=14921\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">12 Galaxies\u003c/a> April 13, 2006.\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://profile.myspace.com/annuals\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Annuals\u003c/a> — Opening for Blonde Redhead at \u003ca href=\"http://www.bimbos365club.com/bands.html\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Bimbo’s\u003c/a> April 23 and 24, 2006.\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/menomena\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Menomena\u003c/a> — Coming to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.theindependentsf.com/june2007.htm\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Independent\u003c/a> June 9, 2007.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ripe for the plucking, but not coming to town any time soon:\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/apesandandroids\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Apes & Androids\u003c/a> — Eminently danceable, Apes & Androids’ spaced-out funk-and-soul sound dovetails nicely with their off-the-wall stage presence — headbands, velour and face paint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.arielpink.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Ariel Pink\u003c/a> — Definitely the most random and oddest act I witnessed at South-by-Southwest, which is saying a lot. A quick look at his influences on myspace is not possible, it requires quite a bit of scrolling. I heard Jackson Five at one point in Austin and Bauhaus soon after. What does petulant singer Ariel Rosenberg want to sound like next? I’m happy to stick around and find out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.themintchicks.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Mint Chicks\u003c/a> — Remember that lame-ass Cars reunion a few years ago with Todd Rundgren? Hopefully you skipped that. Now go see The Mint Chicks instead. It’s cheaper and they’ve got loads of that good ol’ youthful energy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alela Diane – With soulful vocal chops akin to Gillian Welch or Emmylou Harris, and forthright and confident lyricism, Nevada City-born Alela Diane’s ongoing ascent simply cannot be doubted or stopped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://profile.myspace.com/micahphinson\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Micah P. Hinson\u003c/a> — For a spur-of-the-moment, stripped-down set, Abilene singer-songwriter Micah P. Hinson, with his full-bodied vocal, delivered a moving and sonically eloquent stunner of a performance, far more than just warming up the crowd for Daniel Johnston.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/odeath\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">O’Death\u003c/a> — Imagine if you will that Captain Beefheart broke into a pawn shop in Appalachia and made off with all the musical instruments. I doubt there are many music fans that couldn’t get behind this boisterous blend of punk, country, bluegrass and eccentricity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/healthmusic\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">HEALTH\u003c/a> — A soul-shaking sonic clamor with the random deviations of free jazz and the succinctness of the Minutemen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.twotonboa.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Two-Ton Boa\u003c/a> — If metal was more literate, more twistedly bipolar, and built around dynamic, haunting and evocative vocals instead of hiding behind guitar-hero posturing, it’s name would be Sherry Fraser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/marieesioux\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Mariee Sioux\u003c/a> — Part of the Grass Roots Records family, along with Alela Diane, Mariee Sioux picks out beautiful, smart folk ditties and delivers them like fellow Nevada City resident Joanna Newsom taken down a notch. What is in the water in that town?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the very least, after four long days in Austin, there are about 35-40 bands that I won’t have to clamor to see whenever they decide to embark on a West Coast tour. Alas, I’ll still be looking to the desert in late April and considering getting in line with the sweat-ringed throng out in Indio yet another year.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Elif Shafak: The Bastard of Istanbul",
"headTitle": "Elif Shafak: The Bastard of Istanbul | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>If you’re an NPR fan (which I’m betting you are, otherwise why are you reading this blog?), you may have already heard about Turkish author Elif Shafak and the firestorm surrounding her novel \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b>. Like Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk and scores of other prominent Turkish authors, Shafak was charged under the now-infamous Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which states that it is a crime to insult “Turkishness.” While recovering from childbirth in a hospital, she was acquitted in absentia. Not long after, her friend and colleague, the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was murdered by an ultranationalist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I wasn’t really aware of until doing a little research for this review is that these two incidents galvanized the Turkish public against Article 301, and against the government’s continuing denial that a genocide took place against the Armenian minority in 1915. The trial against Shafak was widely regarded as a farce. In the days after Hrant Dink’s death, crowds marched in the streets chanting “We are all Hrant Dink, we are all Armenian.” The Turkish public is largely fed up, and is heavily in favor of changing laws to facilitate the country’s entry to the European Union and heal the wounds of the past.Shafak’s trial and subsequent backlash may be the catalyst that makes it happen. \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b> has officially gone from “novel” to “cultural touchstone.” So, why write another review? What is left to say about it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shafak was the first author ever charged under Article 301 for statements made by characters in a novel. It’s a useful reminder to us here in the US that fiction, when handled properly, can be as incendiary as a pipe bomb. That it’s a method of speaking the truth that can have literal, actual world-changing consequences. That a novel can be a matter of life and death. One thing you won’t hear a lot about in the many articles that have been written about Shafak is the content of the actual book (aside from a few brief quotes of the passages that got her in hot water.) It seems like plain old bad manners to ask this: Is \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b> — as a novel, a story, a reading experience rather than a political statement — any good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story is sprawling, populated by a cast of dozens, spanning a hundred years. It’s tough to summarize, but I’ll try. The story opens with Zeliha Kazanci, a rebellious, hot-tempered young woman in a miniskirt, angrily tromping through the rainy streets of Istanbul and cursing the skies. Before long, we find out why she is so disconsolate: she is pregnant, unmarried, and on her way to have an abortion. At the last minute, though, she can’t bring herself to go through with the procedure. And thus she becomes the mother of Asya, the titular bastard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast forward to the present day. Asya is now the age that her mother was when she was born. Asya is suffocating in an all-female household, stuffed with Aunties and grannies. There’s her mother (who she calls Auntie Zeliha: a still unmarried Bohemian tattoo artist), Auntie Banu (a headscarf-wearing fortune teller) Auntie Feride (a paranoid schizophrenic with ever-changing hair color) and Auntie Cevriye (a shy schoolteacher). There’s Grandma Gulsum, a grim woman who has never fully accepted her granddaughter, and Petite-Ma, the senile great-grandmother who keeps the secrets hidden. All the Kazanci men have either died of illness, been killed by violence, or sent into exile. In the latter category is Uncle Mustafa, who moved to Arizona twenty years earlier and has never been back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cut to Arizona, where Mustafa is married to Rose, the broadest caricature of a white American woman you can imagine. (We first encounter her in a supermarket, buying diet ice cream bars by the case.) Rose seems to have married Mustafa entirely out of spite: her ex-husband, the father of her daughter, is Armenian. That daughter, Armanoush (or “Amy”, as her mother calls her) is the same age as Asya and is equally suffocated: by her doting, meddling Armenian-American relatives in San Francisco, and her bitchy, possessive, meddling blond mother in Arizona. Feeling lost and displaced, the only space Armanoush has to herself is Cafe Constantinopolis, an online community of young, politically outspoken Armenian-Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the chatroom, Armanoush is inspired by a discussion about Janissaries — “Christian children captured and converted by the Ottoman state with a CHANCE to climb the social ladder at the expense of despising their own people and forgetting their own past,” in the words of one virtual chatter. “Will you abandon your community to make peace with the Turks and let them whitewash the past so that, as they say, we can all move FORWARD?” The general consensus among this group is: There can be no moving forward, in any fashion, without Turkish acknowledgment of the 1915 genocide. Armanoush concocts a plan. She travels to Istanbul without telling either of her parents. She goes to stay with her stepfather’s family — sharing a room with Asya, her opposite and double. For the remainder of the book, Asya and Armanoush argue about history, bond against their respective crazy relatives, and discover a few deep dark family secrets. We find out the shocking identity of Asya’s father, and we find out that the two families, one Turkish and one Armenian, are more closely tied by blood and by history than they know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elif Shafak translated her book into English herself. This might help to excuse or explain some of the stiltedness in the dialogue that mars the story. Early on, Asya is telling Armanoush about how she started hating sports once she grew breasts. “The body moves forward gaining speed in accordance with the law of acceleration. The amount of change in your speed is proportional to the amount of force impressed upon the body, and in that direction. And then what happens? The boobies accelerate too, even though they move with a completely dissonant rhythm of their own, up and down, eventually slowing your wind. The law of inertia plus the law of universal gravitation!” If you can find two nineteen-year-old girls who actually speak this way to each other, anywhere on earth, I’ll give you a million dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given that the whole theme of the novel is cultural displacement and lack of understanding, I would have expected more attention to be paid to the way the characters speak to one another. Armanoush speaks no Turkish. Most of the Turkish characters speak no English, except for Asya and and a few of her friends. But we’re simply expected to believe that Asya is able to translate and referee complex discussions about history and genocide, translating everyone’s contribution around the table, with no pauses or misunderstandings. Jonathan Safran Foer dealt with this problem much more imaginatively in \u003cb>Everything Is Illuminated\u003c/b>, another novel where a young American goes back to the old country to confront past atrocities. Foer has every other chapter narrated in broken English by Alex, the Ukrainian tour guide. As the book goes on, Alex’s idiosyncratic English improves more and more. Shafak just skips over the language issue entirely, which seems like a missed opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A couple other aspects grated on me. One is the fact that the characters in the novel, over and over, are described as being like characters in a novel. “I am surrounded by Chekhovian characters!” thinks Armanoush, about her family. Later, to her chatroom friends, she writes, “I feel like I am in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.” Not ten pages later: “They are like Flannery O’Connor characters, Armanoush thought to herself.” After hanging out with Asya’s disaffected friends, Armanoush describes them as being like characters from a Kundera novel. (Not much of a stretch, considering they hang out at a place called Cafe Kundera.) Another tic that broke my concentration over and over is Shafak’s liberal use of punctuation marks. Here is how Rose responds, when she discovers her daughter has secretly left the country: “Oh my god!! But she is not here! Where is my baby?! Where is she?!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, sure, the big dark secret at the center of the story ends up being not much of a secret at all to the attentive reader. And yes, the dialogue is a bit wooden. Maybe more than a bit. But that is because \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b> isn’t really a novel. Shafak uses fictional characters as proxies, symbolic of various political and ethnic factions, to have a book-length discussion about Turkey’s past and future. Nationalists saw this book as a threat, because it is a threat. Had Elif Shafak taken all the opinions and statements of the characters and written a nonfiction book of essays on Turkishness, denial, and genocide, her very life could have been at stake, just like her friend Hrant Dink, rather than just her freedom. \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b> is a provocation, a point of discussion, a refusal to deny the past any longer. By that measure, Elif Shafak succeeds, tremendously.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If you’re an NPR fan (which I’m betting you are, otherwise why are you reading this blog?), you may have already heard about Turkish author Elif Shafak and the firestorm surrounding her novel \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b>. Like Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk and scores of other prominent Turkish authors, Shafak was charged under the now-infamous Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which states that it is a crime to insult “Turkishness.” While recovering from childbirth in a hospital, she was acquitted in absentia. Not long after, her friend and colleague, the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was murdered by an ultranationalist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I wasn’t really aware of until doing a little research for this review is that these two incidents galvanized the Turkish public against Article 301, and against the government’s continuing denial that a genocide took place against the Armenian minority in 1915. The trial against Shafak was widely regarded as a farce. In the days after Hrant Dink’s death, crowds marched in the streets chanting “We are all Hrant Dink, we are all Armenian.” The Turkish public is largely fed up, and is heavily in favor of changing laws to facilitate the country’s entry to the European Union and heal the wounds of the past.Shafak’s trial and subsequent backlash may be the catalyst that makes it happen. \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b> has officially gone from “novel” to “cultural touchstone.” So, why write another review? What is left to say about it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shafak was the first author ever charged under Article 301 for statements made by characters in a novel. It’s a useful reminder to us here in the US that fiction, when handled properly, can be as incendiary as a pipe bomb. That it’s a method of speaking the truth that can have literal, actual world-changing consequences. That a novel can be a matter of life and death. One thing you won’t hear a lot about in the many articles that have been written about Shafak is the content of the actual book (aside from a few brief quotes of the passages that got her in hot water.) It seems like plain old bad manners to ask this: Is \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b> — as a novel, a story, a reading experience rather than a political statement — any good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The story is sprawling, populated by a cast of dozens, spanning a hundred years. It’s tough to summarize, but I’ll try. The story opens with Zeliha Kazanci, a rebellious, hot-tempered young woman in a miniskirt, angrily tromping through the rainy streets of Istanbul and cursing the skies. Before long, we find out why she is so disconsolate: she is pregnant, unmarried, and on her way to have an abortion. At the last minute, though, she can’t bring herself to go through with the procedure. And thus she becomes the mother of Asya, the titular bastard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast forward to the present day. Asya is now the age that her mother was when she was born. Asya is suffocating in an all-female household, stuffed with Aunties and grannies. There’s her mother (who she calls Auntie Zeliha: a still unmarried Bohemian tattoo artist), Auntie Banu (a headscarf-wearing fortune teller) Auntie Feride (a paranoid schizophrenic with ever-changing hair color) and Auntie Cevriye (a shy schoolteacher). There’s Grandma Gulsum, a grim woman who has never fully accepted her granddaughter, and Petite-Ma, the senile great-grandmother who keeps the secrets hidden. All the Kazanci men have either died of illness, been killed by violence, or sent into exile. In the latter category is Uncle Mustafa, who moved to Arizona twenty years earlier and has never been back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cut to Arizona, where Mustafa is married to Rose, the broadest caricature of a white American woman you can imagine. (We first encounter her in a supermarket, buying diet ice cream bars by the case.) Rose seems to have married Mustafa entirely out of spite: her ex-husband, the father of her daughter, is Armenian. That daughter, Armanoush (or “Amy”, as her mother calls her) is the same age as Asya and is equally suffocated: by her doting, meddling Armenian-American relatives in San Francisco, and her bitchy, possessive, meddling blond mother in Arizona. Feeling lost and displaced, the only space Armanoush has to herself is Cafe Constantinopolis, an online community of young, politically outspoken Armenian-Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the chatroom, Armanoush is inspired by a discussion about Janissaries — “Christian children captured and converted by the Ottoman state with a CHANCE to climb the social ladder at the expense of despising their own people and forgetting their own past,” in the words of one virtual chatter. “Will you abandon your community to make peace with the Turks and let them whitewash the past so that, as they say, we can all move FORWARD?” The general consensus among this group is: There can be no moving forward, in any fashion, without Turkish acknowledgment of the 1915 genocide. Armanoush concocts a plan. She travels to Istanbul without telling either of her parents. She goes to stay with her stepfather’s family — sharing a room with Asya, her opposite and double. For the remainder of the book, Asya and Armanoush argue about history, bond against their respective crazy relatives, and discover a few deep dark family secrets. We find out the shocking identity of Asya’s father, and we find out that the two families, one Turkish and one Armenian, are more closely tied by blood and by history than they know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Elif Shafak translated her book into English herself. This might help to excuse or explain some of the stiltedness in the dialogue that mars the story. Early on, Asya is telling Armanoush about how she started hating sports once she grew breasts. “The body moves forward gaining speed in accordance with the law of acceleration. The amount of change in your speed is proportional to the amount of force impressed upon the body, and in that direction. And then what happens? The boobies accelerate too, even though they move with a completely dissonant rhythm of their own, up and down, eventually slowing your wind. The law of inertia plus the law of universal gravitation!” If you can find two nineteen-year-old girls who actually speak this way to each other, anywhere on earth, I’ll give you a million dollars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given that the whole theme of the novel is cultural displacement and lack of understanding, I would have expected more attention to be paid to the way the characters speak to one another. Armanoush speaks no Turkish. Most of the Turkish characters speak no English, except for Asya and and a few of her friends. But we’re simply expected to believe that Asya is able to translate and referee complex discussions about history and genocide, translating everyone’s contribution around the table, with no pauses or misunderstandings. Jonathan Safran Foer dealt with this problem much more imaginatively in \u003cb>Everything Is Illuminated\u003c/b>, another novel where a young American goes back to the old country to confront past atrocities. Foer has every other chapter narrated in broken English by Alex, the Ukrainian tour guide. As the book goes on, Alex’s idiosyncratic English improves more and more. Shafak just skips over the language issue entirely, which seems like a missed opportunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A couple other aspects grated on me. One is the fact that the characters in the novel, over and over, are described as being like characters in a novel. “I am surrounded by Chekhovian characters!” thinks Armanoush, about her family. Later, to her chatroom friends, she writes, “I feel like I am in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.” Not ten pages later: “They are like Flannery O’Connor characters, Armanoush thought to herself.” After hanging out with Asya’s disaffected friends, Armanoush describes them as being like characters from a Kundera novel. (Not much of a stretch, considering they hang out at a place called Cafe Kundera.) Another tic that broke my concentration over and over is Shafak’s liberal use of punctuation marks. Here is how Rose responds, when she discovers her daughter has secretly left the country: “Oh my god!! But she is not here! Where is my baby?! Where is she?!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, sure, the big dark secret at the center of the story ends up being not much of a secret at all to the attentive reader. And yes, the dialogue is a bit wooden. Maybe more than a bit. But that is because \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b> isn’t really a novel. Shafak uses fictional characters as proxies, symbolic of various political and ethnic factions, to have a book-length discussion about Turkey’s past and future. Nationalists saw this book as a threat, because it is a threat. Had Elif Shafak taken all the opinions and statements of the characters and written a nonfiction book of essays on Turkishness, denial, and genocide, her very life could have been at stake, just like her friend Hrant Dink, rather than just her freedom. \u003cb>The Bastard of Istanbul\u003c/b> is a provocation, a point of discussion, a refusal to deny the past any longer. By that measure, Elif Shafak succeeds, tremendously.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Anthony Siegel: All Will Be Revealed",
"headTitle": "Anthony Siegel: All Will Be Revealed | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>New York City, 1896. A new century is about to dawn, and all sorts of newly invented machines are changing the rhythms of everyday life. The telephone, the telegraph, the typewriting machine (operated by a person called, naturally, a “typewriter”), and perhaps above all, the camera. Intrepid explorers were reporting back on wonders from the farthest reaches of the planet, bringing back bizarre animals mounted and stuffed, as well as tales of harrowing escapes. Robert Anthony Siegel chose a fascinating cultural moment in which to set his second novel, \u003cb>All Will Be Revealed\u003c/b>. The book begins with an epigraph from Roland Barthes’ \u003cb>Camera Lucida\u003c/b>. Barthes noted that the early cameras were precision machines, “clocks for seeing.” It’s a perfect way to introduce the themes of this book: all the characters, in one way or another, are attempting to fix a moment in time, and stay in it, like a photograph, long after the moment has passed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there were great technological strides being made in the late 19th century, revolutions in medicine were slower in coming. That meant you had a whole generation of modern, forward-thinking people who were still on very intimate terms with death, in all its ugly glory. Is it any wonder that so many people sought out telephone- and telegraph-like methods in which to contact the dead? Now, it seems bizarre to us that many thousands of prominent people came to believe in ectoplasm-producing, table-rapping spirit mediums and spirit photography. If you’ve ever seen any of these so-called spirit photographs, they look laughably fakey in the era of Photoshop. Famously, Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, went on record defending two young girls who claimed to have taken pictures of fairies in their backyard. (An aside: if you want to read a truly terrific novel on the subject of Arthur Conan Doyle and the Spiritualist movement, run out and get a copy of Julian Barnes’ \u003cb>Arthur and George\u003c/b>, today.) But consider how magical it must have seemed to see a person’s exact face develop on a photographic plate, or receive a message from the other side of the world only minutes after it was sent. Being able to talk to a dead relative via Ouija board seems no less plausible, in that context. And there were plenty of mediums willing to pull out all the stops — spirits materializing in the flesh, spirit writing, channeling — to wring cash out of the rich, grieving and credulous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chief protagonist of \u003cb>All Will Be Revealed\u003c/b> is Augustus Auerbach, a reclusive, wheelchair-bound millionaire. Auerbach is magnate of a pornography empire, and made his fortune by mining the endless possibilities of the stereo card — two photos side by side that become a simple three-dimensional image when seen through a viewer. The cards are sold, at astronomically high prices, in plain brown wrappers mailed to thousands of men who all call themselves John Smith. Now this is something I’d never stopped to consider before: that the invention of commercially available dirty photographs must have sparked a revolution in worldwide masturbatory habits on a scale that makes the internet look like no big thing. It’s mind-boggling, really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Auerbach runs his business obsessively. He stays up all night dictating letters to his full-time “typewriter.” He poses the models and takes the photographs. He keeps one step ahead of Kleinfeldt, his biggest competitor. He gives crucial monthly payoffs to various civic groups, which make it possible for him to run his business without being raided by cops or denounced from the pulpit. In one funny early scene, Auerbach is forced to play host to a bacchanal for a group called the Clean Living League. A newspaper editor is “parading around in petticoats,” and also, he sees “the Reverend Voorhees standing on the table, spraying Judge Montcrief from above with a bottle of champagne…” But something is missing from Auerbach’s life: any hint of real human connection. As you might imagine, things will not stay that way for long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Auerbach’s favorite model, a young woman named Jane Larue, is nine months pregnant. After a remarkable (and lucrative) series of photos, Jane goes into labor. Auerbach is present at the birth. Witnessing it, and witnessing Jane Larue’s subsequent transformation from porn model to loving mother begins to shake up his highly ordered, unemotional world. Looking at the newborn boy — which Jane named Augie, after him — “Auerbach had stared in horrified fascination, trying to reconcile the smallness of its fingers and the delicacy of its ears with the ferocity of its sucking. That odd combination of rapacity and fragility — he recognized it immediately, intuitively: humanness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then, as often happened, the baby dies. Jane Larue is shattered. In her desperate grief, she begins visiting Verena Swann, world-famous spirit medium and widow of the late, renowned polar explorer Theodore Swann. Eventually, Jane convinces Auerbach to attend a séance with her. He is skeptical: “He most especially did not want a crudely doctored photo of himself with ghosts in white togas superimposed on the background”. But he goes, and what happens to him there changes everything, forever. Verena Swann, in her trance, makes contact with the spirit of Auerbach’s dead mother, an actress who was killed in a ridiculous stage accident when Augustus was a child. The shock of his mother’s death somehow made his legs stop growing, which left him wheelchair-bound. He is deperate to speak to his mother again. All this deeply human and highly embarrassing information comes pouring out in the séance. Against his better judgment, Auerbach is hooked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately for Augustus, Verena Swann is a fraud. Or, at least, she thinks she is. Much of her spirit-medium work consists of conjuring up the spirits of dead babies for their crying mothers (“weepers,” as Verena dismissively calls them.), and making ghosts appear bodily, when the price is right (the ghost being her assistant Maisie in a white sheet). Her great success has been entirely orchestrated by her controlling brother-in-law Leopold, who has spent a lifetime trying to get out of the shadow of his dead explorer brother. And yet: there are moments when Verena’s gift might be real. As Augustus and Verena become more and more drawn to each other, Leopold’s cravenness and jealousy turn toxic. Things get a little silly toward the end, when Augustus is compelled to rescue Verena from the clutches of a mad scientist in Brooklyn, who has locked her in a Panopticon (yes, an actual, literal Panopticon) at Leopold’s behest. Several twists, turns, and \u003ci>deus ex machinae\u003c/i> later, (spoiler alert!!) the bad guys get punished and the good guys live happily ever after.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siegel has synthesized a lot of fun historical tidbits into a serviceable, entertaining, and rather short novel. It’s almost better as an idea, unfortunately, than as this actual, finished book. I kept despairing that a great plotter like T.C. Boyle or Michael Chabon hadn’t taken this same material and whipped it into a five-hundred-page breathless romp, hurtling the reader from the chill of the arctic wastes to the glass-walled, sunny pornography studio to the smoky dark of the séance room, all set against the teeming, dirty streets of Old New York. But Siegel doesn’t really do this. His prose is straightforward, realistic, simple, spare. That’s good for a lot of books — but not for this one. I kept wishing he would go into more detail, that he would expand the various and sundry minor characters into full-fledged humans, or would just employ more big, operatic, lyrical flourishes to match the operatic story. Then I had a great idea: Siegel should get Alan Moore, the legendary British graphic novelist, to create an \u003cb>All Will Be Revealed\u003c/b> comic book. Siegel covers territory that’s sort of similar to some of Moore’s other works, like \u003cb>From Hell\u003c/b> and \u003cb>The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen\u003c/b>. Drawings would fill the gaps in Siegel’s too-quiet prose: we would finally get to experience Augustus Auerbach’s endlessly huge mansion, or the bodies of the young, lithe models being directed into sexual positions before the camera, or the manly and doomed Theodore Swann struggling across the polar ice. Unless that happens, I can’t help feeling that All was only Partially Revealed.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "New York City, 1896. A new century is about to dawn, and all sorts of newly invented machines are changing the rhythms of everyday life. The telephone, the telegraph, the typewriting machine (operated by a person called, naturally, a \"typewriter\"), and perhaps above all, the camera. Intrepid explorers were reporting back on wonders from the farthest reaches of the planet, bringing back bizarre animals mounted and stuffed, as well as tales of harrowing escapes. Robert Anthony Siegel chose a fascinating cultural moment in which to set his second novel, \u003cb>All Will Be Revealed\u003c/b>. The book begins with an epigraph from Roland Barthes' \u003cb>Camera Lucida\u003c/b>. Barthes noted that the early cameras were precision machines, \"clocks for seeing.\" It's a perfect way to introduce the themes of this book: all the characters, in one way or another, are attempting to fix a moment in time, and stay in it, like a photograph, long after the moment has passed.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>New York City, 1896. A new century is about to dawn, and all sorts of newly invented machines are changing the rhythms of everyday life. The telephone, the telegraph, the typewriting machine (operated by a person called, naturally, a “typewriter”), and perhaps above all, the camera. Intrepid explorers were reporting back on wonders from the farthest reaches of the planet, bringing back bizarre animals mounted and stuffed, as well as tales of harrowing escapes. Robert Anthony Siegel chose a fascinating cultural moment in which to set his second novel, \u003cb>All Will Be Revealed\u003c/b>. The book begins with an epigraph from Roland Barthes’ \u003cb>Camera Lucida\u003c/b>. Barthes noted that the early cameras were precision machines, “clocks for seeing.” It’s a perfect way to introduce the themes of this book: all the characters, in one way or another, are attempting to fix a moment in time, and stay in it, like a photograph, long after the moment has passed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there were great technological strides being made in the late 19th century, revolutions in medicine were slower in coming. That meant you had a whole generation of modern, forward-thinking people who were still on very intimate terms with death, in all its ugly glory. Is it any wonder that so many people sought out telephone- and telegraph-like methods in which to contact the dead? Now, it seems bizarre to us that many thousands of prominent people came to believe in ectoplasm-producing, table-rapping spirit mediums and spirit photography. If you’ve ever seen any of these so-called spirit photographs, they look laughably fakey in the era of Photoshop. Famously, Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, went on record defending two young girls who claimed to have taken pictures of fairies in their backyard. (An aside: if you want to read a truly terrific novel on the subject of Arthur Conan Doyle and the Spiritualist movement, run out and get a copy of Julian Barnes’ \u003cb>Arthur and George\u003c/b>, today.) But consider how magical it must have seemed to see a person’s exact face develop on a photographic plate, or receive a message from the other side of the world only minutes after it was sent. Being able to talk to a dead relative via Ouija board seems no less plausible, in that context. And there were plenty of mediums willing to pull out all the stops — spirits materializing in the flesh, spirit writing, channeling — to wring cash out of the rich, grieving and credulous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chief protagonist of \u003cb>All Will Be Revealed\u003c/b> is Augustus Auerbach, a reclusive, wheelchair-bound millionaire. Auerbach is magnate of a pornography empire, and made his fortune by mining the endless possibilities of the stereo card — two photos side by side that become a simple three-dimensional image when seen through a viewer. The cards are sold, at astronomically high prices, in plain brown wrappers mailed to thousands of men who all call themselves John Smith. Now this is something I’d never stopped to consider before: that the invention of commercially available dirty photographs must have sparked a revolution in worldwide masturbatory habits on a scale that makes the internet look like no big thing. It’s mind-boggling, really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Auerbach runs his business obsessively. He stays up all night dictating letters to his full-time “typewriter.” He poses the models and takes the photographs. He keeps one step ahead of Kleinfeldt, his biggest competitor. He gives crucial monthly payoffs to various civic groups, which make it possible for him to run his business without being raided by cops or denounced from the pulpit. In one funny early scene, Auerbach is forced to play host to a bacchanal for a group called the Clean Living League. A newspaper editor is “parading around in petticoats,” and also, he sees “the Reverend Voorhees standing on the table, spraying Judge Montcrief from above with a bottle of champagne…” But something is missing from Auerbach’s life: any hint of real human connection. As you might imagine, things will not stay that way for long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Auerbach’s favorite model, a young woman named Jane Larue, is nine months pregnant. After a remarkable (and lucrative) series of photos, Jane goes into labor. Auerbach is present at the birth. Witnessing it, and witnessing Jane Larue’s subsequent transformation from porn model to loving mother begins to shake up his highly ordered, unemotional world. Looking at the newborn boy — which Jane named Augie, after him — “Auerbach had stared in horrified fascination, trying to reconcile the smallness of its fingers and the delicacy of its ears with the ferocity of its sucking. That odd combination of rapacity and fragility — he recognized it immediately, intuitively: humanness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then, as often happened, the baby dies. Jane Larue is shattered. In her desperate grief, she begins visiting Verena Swann, world-famous spirit medium and widow of the late, renowned polar explorer Theodore Swann. Eventually, Jane convinces Auerbach to attend a séance with her. He is skeptical: “He most especially did not want a crudely doctored photo of himself with ghosts in white togas superimposed on the background”. But he goes, and what happens to him there changes everything, forever. Verena Swann, in her trance, makes contact with the spirit of Auerbach’s dead mother, an actress who was killed in a ridiculous stage accident when Augustus was a child. The shock of his mother’s death somehow made his legs stop growing, which left him wheelchair-bound. He is deperate to speak to his mother again. All this deeply human and highly embarrassing information comes pouring out in the séance. Against his better judgment, Auerbach is hooked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately for Augustus, Verena Swann is a fraud. Or, at least, she thinks she is. Much of her spirit-medium work consists of conjuring up the spirits of dead babies for their crying mothers (“weepers,” as Verena dismissively calls them.), and making ghosts appear bodily, when the price is right (the ghost being her assistant Maisie in a white sheet). Her great success has been entirely orchestrated by her controlling brother-in-law Leopold, who has spent a lifetime trying to get out of the shadow of his dead explorer brother. And yet: there are moments when Verena’s gift might be real. As Augustus and Verena become more and more drawn to each other, Leopold’s cravenness and jealousy turn toxic. Things get a little silly toward the end, when Augustus is compelled to rescue Verena from the clutches of a mad scientist in Brooklyn, who has locked her in a Panopticon (yes, an actual, literal Panopticon) at Leopold’s behest. Several twists, turns, and \u003ci>deus ex machinae\u003c/i> later, (spoiler alert!!) the bad guys get punished and the good guys live happily ever after.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Siegel has synthesized a lot of fun historical tidbits into a serviceable, entertaining, and rather short novel. It’s almost better as an idea, unfortunately, than as this actual, finished book. I kept despairing that a great plotter like T.C. Boyle or Michael Chabon hadn’t taken this same material and whipped it into a five-hundred-page breathless romp, hurtling the reader from the chill of the arctic wastes to the glass-walled, sunny pornography studio to the smoky dark of the séance room, all set against the teeming, dirty streets of Old New York. But Siegel doesn’t really do this. His prose is straightforward, realistic, simple, spare. That’s good for a lot of books — but not for this one. I kept wishing he would go into more detail, that he would expand the various and sundry minor characters into full-fledged humans, or would just employ more big, operatic, lyrical flourishes to match the operatic story. Then I had a great idea: Siegel should get Alan Moore, the legendary British graphic novelist, to create an \u003cb>All Will Be Revealed\u003c/b> comic book. Siegel covers territory that’s sort of similar to some of Moore’s other works, like \u003cb>From Hell\u003c/b> and \u003cb>The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen\u003c/b>. Drawings would fill the gaps in Siegel’s too-quiet prose: we would finally get to experience Augustus Auerbach’s endlessly huge mansion, or the bodies of the young, lithe models being directed into sexual positions before the camera, or the manly and doomed Theodore Swann struggling across the polar ice. Unless that happens, I can’t help feeling that All was only Partially Revealed.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Every year, avid local show goers eagerly look forward to seeing what Noise Pop, the annual SF music festival celebrating the best in indie music, will offer. They know to expect a wide-ranging well-picked and inclusive lineup of many local favorites, and with each year that passes, much much more. This year’s 15th anniversary festival not only provided a comprehensive lineup of music acts, but also featured art exhibits, film and comedy as well. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as Noise Pop’s festival grows, so does its calendar. Chris Appelgren joined the staff last year when the event went from a two-person operation putting on a six-day event to organizing and sponsoring events throughout the year with a full, year-round staff. He met with me at the Noise Pop offices in the Mission on Tuesday shortly before \u003ca href=\"http://www.noisepop.com/freedm\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Freedm Night\u003c/a> kicked off the festival. I was a little let down to discover that the office was not the frenzied mess of nerves and shouting I was expecting, but a constant stream of phone calls and inter-office questions did provide an appropriately industrious aural backdrop for our conversation. Chris described how \u003cb>Noise Pop\u003c/b> has shifted its focus in recent years to accommodate changes in the music scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As we’ve gotten bigger, our mission shifted to not only celebrating what’s great about the city, but also teaming it up with great national artists in a way that’s more intimate. We want the shows to feel carefully created and considered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, I scanned the roster of over 110 bands playing over 30 shows, and felt pretty overwhelmed, but was excited to find \u003ca href=\"http://www.hellaband.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Hella\u003c/a> headlining a\u003ca href=\"http://www.bottomofthehill.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Bottom of the Hill\u003c/a> show. I’d been introduced to \u003cb>Hella\u003c/b>, a math rock outfit from Sacramento with a steadily growing fan base around the country, a couple of years ago, but had never had the chance see them live before. The show was entirely packed, with the body heat inside beating the frigid chill creeping in from the outside and confirming the show’s sold out success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many other fans who came out expressly to see Hella, I knew next to nothing about the other bands that would be playing that night, which made it all the more of a special noisy treat to discover three killer acts — each absolutely nothing like the previous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area-based \u003ca href=\"http://www.tartufirock.net\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Tartufi\u003c/a> started off the show with a thirty minute set of fascinating live loop-based songs, which combined layers upon layers of vocals and reverb with alternating slow intense passages and hard/fast rock drumming. With a four-year history as a three-piece group rather than the two-piece that played, some fans didn’t know what to expect, but they were pleased with the results. I got a chance to corner Lynn Angel, who provides guitar, vocals and live looping for the band, just as she had gotten her parents (who are evidently very good sports) into a cab after the set. She confirmed that Tartufi would be remaining a two-piece for now. Many Noise Pop openers move up through the ranks to become headliners, so expect to see more of Tartufi in the future, as part of Noise Pop or just around town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.macromantics.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Macromantics\u003c/a> from Australia kept things going with a dark yet goofy hip hop set that conformed to many of the conventions of hip hop without sounding like any particular act I’d heard before. There was the command to get your hands in the air as well as the song written only to spell out M-A-C-R-O-M-A-N-T-I-C-S. But there was also gritty beats mixed with references to Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown and a refrain from the nursery rhyme “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” While fans were enthusiastic about the set, Macromantics convinced me about her potential by working the merchandise table after performing. For a rising artist on her way to South by Southwest, she was willing to put in the time and the effort to win over every fan she could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.ninjatune.net/ninja/artist.php?id=125\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Pop Levi\u003c/a> turned it out for a genre-bending set of classic rock with elements of glam, funk and pretty much everything else thrown in. Hailing from Los Angeles, Liverpool and lately, his van, Pop is clearly destined for hipster stardom, with appropriately obscure listening tastes (wax cylinder recordings from the Bahamas) and a pedigree to match. He boasts a long-standing gig with electroclashers \u003ca href=\"http://www.ladytron.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Ladytron\u003c/a>, and before that, time on \u003ca href=\"http://www.ninjatune.net\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">NinjaTune Records\u003c/a> with his band \u003ca href=\"http://www.ninjatune.net/ninja/artist.php?id=94\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Super Numeri\u003c/a>. Despite a distinctly retro edge to his sound, the music is far from derivative. And Pop isn’t interested in being a throwback. While his music draws on an extremely wide variety of influences, he mentioned just two artists he particularly admires — Bob Dylan and Sun Ra — neither immediately evident in his sound. Another artist fitting in a Noise Pop gig before landing at South by Southwest, Pop is currently in the middle of a punishingly lengthy tour. Be on the lookout for him to come through SF again soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hella is probably best known for the genius drumming of Zach Hill, who has also been part of other excellent Northern California acts including \u003ca href=\"http://www.crimeinchoir.net\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Crime in Choir\u003c/a>, who played an epic, sweaty show at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.hemlocktavern.net\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Hemlock\u003c/a> just last week. His drumming, while it confounds the average show goer by making it nearly impossible to dance — much less bob your head to — for longer than a three-second spurt, inspires the truly dedicated fan to new heights in rhythm. This is where I would normally place my choicely worded description of Hella’s sound — but I really can’t top the Wikipedia entry, which describes it as a “technical, Nintendo-influenced blend of math rock, noise rock and avant-garde.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show last Wednesday (Feb 28, 2007) featured this sound front and center, but added a new element — a full complement of vocals on every song. I’d heard snippets from the recently-released full-length album, \u003cb>There’s No 666 in Outer Space\u003c/b>, before heading out to the show, and was struck by how the addition of vocals made for a dramatic, wailing rock sound approaching the \u003ca href=\"http://www.themarsvolta.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Mars Volta\u003c/a>. But in person, the vocals were even more raw and echoey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without a doubt, as \u003cb>Noise Pop\u003c/b> continues to grow, you can expect some very exciting treats throughout the year. For more on this year’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.noisepop.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">festival and future events\u003c/a>, visit noisepop.com.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Every year, avid local show goers eagerly look forward to seeing what Noise Pop, the annual SF music festival celebrating the best in indie music, will offer. They know to expect a wide-ranging well-picked and inclusive lineup of many local favorites, and with each year that passes, much much more. This year’s 15th anniversary festival not only provided a comprehensive lineup of music acts, but also featured art exhibits, film and comedy as well. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And as Noise Pop’s festival grows, so does its calendar. Chris Appelgren joined the staff last year when the event went from a two-person operation putting on a six-day event to organizing and sponsoring events throughout the year with a full, year-round staff. He met with me at the Noise Pop offices in the Mission on Tuesday shortly before \u003ca href=\"http://www.noisepop.com/freedm\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Freedm Night\u003c/a> kicked off the festival. I was a little let down to discover that the office was not the frenzied mess of nerves and shouting I was expecting, but a constant stream of phone calls and inter-office questions did provide an appropriately industrious aural backdrop for our conversation. Chris described how \u003cb>Noise Pop\u003c/b> has shifted its focus in recent years to accommodate changes in the music scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As we’ve gotten bigger, our mission shifted to not only celebrating what’s great about the city, but also teaming it up with great national artists in a way that’s more intimate. We want the shows to feel carefully created and considered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This year, I scanned the roster of over 110 bands playing over 30 shows, and felt pretty overwhelmed, but was excited to find \u003ca href=\"http://www.hellaband.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Hella\u003c/a> headlining a\u003ca href=\"http://www.bottomofthehill.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Bottom of the Hill\u003c/a> show. I’d been introduced to \u003cb>Hella\u003c/b>, a math rock outfit from Sacramento with a steadily growing fan base around the country, a couple of years ago, but had never had the chance see them live before. The show was entirely packed, with the body heat inside beating the frigid chill creeping in from the outside and confirming the show’s sold out success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like many other fans who came out expressly to see Hella, I knew next to nothing about the other bands that would be playing that night, which made it all the more of a special noisy treat to discover three killer acts — each absolutely nothing like the previous.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area-based \u003ca href=\"http://www.tartufirock.net\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Tartufi\u003c/a> started off the show with a thirty minute set of fascinating live loop-based songs, which combined layers upon layers of vocals and reverb with alternating slow intense passages and hard/fast rock drumming. With a four-year history as a three-piece group rather than the two-piece that played, some fans didn’t know what to expect, but they were pleased with the results. I got a chance to corner Lynn Angel, who provides guitar, vocals and live looping for the band, just as she had gotten her parents (who are evidently very good sports) into a cab after the set. She confirmed that Tartufi would be remaining a two-piece for now. Many Noise Pop openers move up through the ranks to become headliners, so expect to see more of Tartufi in the future, as part of Noise Pop or just around town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.macromantics.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Macromantics\u003c/a> from Australia kept things going with a dark yet goofy hip hop set that conformed to many of the conventions of hip hop without sounding like any particular act I’d heard before. There was the command to get your hands in the air as well as the song written only to spell out M-A-C-R-O-M-A-N-T-I-C-S. But there was also gritty beats mixed with references to Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown and a refrain from the nursery rhyme “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” While fans were enthusiastic about the set, Macromantics convinced me about her potential by working the merchandise table after performing. For a rising artist on her way to South by Southwest, she was willing to put in the time and the effort to win over every fan she could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.ninjatune.net/ninja/artist.php?id=125\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Pop Levi\u003c/a> turned it out for a genre-bending set of classic rock with elements of glam, funk and pretty much everything else thrown in. Hailing from Los Angeles, Liverpool and lately, his van, Pop is clearly destined for hipster stardom, with appropriately obscure listening tastes (wax cylinder recordings from the Bahamas) and a pedigree to match. He boasts a long-standing gig with electroclashers \u003ca href=\"http://www.ladytron.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Ladytron\u003c/a>, and before that, time on \u003ca href=\"http://www.ninjatune.net\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">NinjaTune Records\u003c/a> with his band \u003ca href=\"http://www.ninjatune.net/ninja/artist.php?id=94\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Super Numeri\u003c/a>. Despite a distinctly retro edge to his sound, the music is far from derivative. And Pop isn’t interested in being a throwback. While his music draws on an extremely wide variety of influences, he mentioned just two artists he particularly admires — Bob Dylan and Sun Ra — neither immediately evident in his sound. Another artist fitting in a Noise Pop gig before landing at South by Southwest, Pop is currently in the middle of a punishingly lengthy tour. Be on the lookout for him to come through SF again soon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hella is probably best known for the genius drumming of Zach Hill, who has also been part of other excellent Northern California acts including \u003ca href=\"http://www.crimeinchoir.net\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Crime in Choir\u003c/a>, who played an epic, sweaty show at the \u003ca href=\"http://www.hemlocktavern.net\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Hemlock\u003c/a> just last week. His drumming, while it confounds the average show goer by making it nearly impossible to dance — much less bob your head to — for longer than a three-second spurt, inspires the truly dedicated fan to new heights in rhythm. This is where I would normally place my choicely worded description of Hella’s sound — but I really can’t top the Wikipedia entry, which describes it as a “technical, Nintendo-influenced blend of math rock, noise rock and avant-garde.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show last Wednesday (Feb 28, 2007) featured this sound front and center, but added a new element — a full complement of vocals on every song. I’d heard snippets from the recently-released full-length album, \u003cb>There’s No 666 in Outer Space\u003c/b>, before heading out to the show, and was struck by how the addition of vocals made for a dramatic, wailing rock sound approaching the \u003ca href=\"http://www.themarsvolta.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Mars Volta\u003c/a>. But in person, the vocals were even more raw and echoey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without a doubt, as \u003cb>Noise Pop\u003c/b> continues to grow, you can expect some very exciting treats throughout the year. For more on this year’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.noisepop.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">festival and future events\u003c/a>, visit noisepop.com.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Noise Pop has come and gone again, and this year, the fifteenth installment of the Bay Area’s preeminent music festival, had some real solid lineups if no eye-popping, big-ticket event like last year’s visit from the Flaming Lips. The triumphant Bay Area return of 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson, the Sebadoh reunion, The Dandy Warhols and Cake notwithstanding, this year’s fest was all about bands and artists just beginning to stretch out and explore their newfound acclaim. Bands like Tapes ‘n Tapes, who played the opening night party, as well as Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Midlake, The Ponys, Ghostland Observatory and Clinic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But like every year, there are some lesser-known names a little further down the marquee that when you discover them, make the festival all the more rewarding. I wanted to catch some of these acts, diligently identified before the festival began, like Montreal’s latest indie-pop darling Malajube and local psychedelic rockers Wooden Shjips, but ended up getting blindsided instead by the fantastic sets of Afro-Cuban groove merchants Ray Barbee & The Mattson Two and a Los Angeles hip-hop artist dubbed \u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/thegraykid\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Gray Kid\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>O.K., maybe you already knew about The Gray Kid. You knew about him back in ’06 when his crack-up Justin Timberlake parody “PaxilBack” was a \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGKJcayVXU8\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">YouTube\u003c/a> hit. Or maybe you’re an avid watcher of \u003cb>30 Rock\u003c/b> and you were groovin’ to his soul-flecked, quick-witted hip-hop as early as last Thursday at 10 p.m. Or just possibly, you’re like most of the crowd waiting for Ghostland Observatory to take the stage on Saturday night who were hearing the Los Angeles-based MC for the first time. I won’t reveal where I fall on that timeline, but suffice it to say that I wasn’t completely sure what to expect from his live show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just minutes after taking the stage, The Gray Kid, aka Steve Cooper, had already won the crowd over through sheer will, careening around the stage, coiling up tightly with potential energy and delivering his lyrics with a manic fervor, practically hurling the rhymes from his head out at the audience via his hand gestures. He obsessively preens, smoothing out his hair across his forehead, and demands the audience’s attention like a seasoned showman with a righteous belief in his talents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the while, he spits out rapid-fire, adroitly-phrased lyrics sometimes reminiscent of Eminem, interspersed with soul grooves and an R&B falsetto, delivered over hip-hop and dance beats. The influence of Dirty South rap is heard, especially on the rollicking “Oh My,” as are the genre-bending explorations of Outkast. His lyrics have the smart-alecky feel of the Beastie Boys and his falsetto might remind one of Prince. If you’re noticing that a lot of big-name, popular acts are being mentioned, that’s because The Gray Kid is, at his core, a pop artist. His onstage demeanor is primarily a means of connecting with his audience. He ingratiates himself with the crowd through witty and irreverent lyrics about L.A.’s silicon-and-botox-addicted Barbie dolls, and draws them still closer by asking that they repeat the final line to his hook-laden driving song “Eh Man” along with him, “I eat with my hands. I drive with my knees.” By the end of his set, it’s obvious that he’s gained hundreds of new fans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you didn’t know The Gray Kid before now, you certainly will before too long. He’ll make sure of that.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Noise Pop has come and gone again, and this year, the fifteenth installment of the Bay Area’s preeminent music festival, had some real solid lineups if no eye-popping, big-ticket event like last year’s visit from the Flaming Lips. The triumphant Bay Area return of 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson, the Sebadoh reunion, The Dandy Warhols and Cake notwithstanding, this year’s fest was all about bands and artists just beginning to stretch out and explore their newfound acclaim. Bands like Tapes ‘n Tapes, who played the opening night party, as well as Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Midlake, The Ponys, Ghostland Observatory and Clinic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But like every year, there are some lesser-known names a little further down the marquee that when you discover them, make the festival all the more rewarding. I wanted to catch some of these acts, diligently identified before the festival began, like Montreal’s latest indie-pop darling Malajube and local psychedelic rockers Wooden Shjips, but ended up getting blindsided instead by the fantastic sets of Afro-Cuban groove merchants Ray Barbee & The Mattson Two and a Los Angeles hip-hop artist dubbed \u003ca href=\"http://www.myspace.com/thegraykid\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">The Gray Kid\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>O.K., maybe you already knew about The Gray Kid. You knew about him back in ’06 when his crack-up Justin Timberlake parody “PaxilBack” was a \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGKJcayVXU8\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">YouTube\u003c/a> hit. Or maybe you’re an avid watcher of \u003cb>30 Rock\u003c/b> and you were groovin’ to his soul-flecked, quick-witted hip-hop as early as last Thursday at 10 p.m. Or just possibly, you’re like most of the crowd waiting for Ghostland Observatory to take the stage on Saturday night who were hearing the Los Angeles-based MC for the first time. I won’t reveal where I fall on that timeline, but suffice it to say that I wasn’t completely sure what to expect from his live show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just minutes after taking the stage, The Gray Kid, aka Steve Cooper, had already won the crowd over through sheer will, careening around the stage, coiling up tightly with potential energy and delivering his lyrics with a manic fervor, practically hurling the rhymes from his head out at the audience via his hand gestures. He obsessively preens, smoothing out his hair across his forehead, and demands the audience’s attention like a seasoned showman with a righteous belief in his talents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All the while, he spits out rapid-fire, adroitly-phrased lyrics sometimes reminiscent of Eminem, interspersed with soul grooves and an R&B falsetto, delivered over hip-hop and dance beats. The influence of Dirty South rap is heard, especially on the rollicking “Oh My,” as are the genre-bending explorations of Outkast. His lyrics have the smart-alecky feel of the Beastie Boys and his falsetto might remind one of Prince. If you’re noticing that a lot of big-name, popular acts are being mentioned, that’s because The Gray Kid is, at his core, a pop artist. His onstage demeanor is primarily a means of connecting with his audience. He ingratiates himself with the crowd through witty and irreverent lyrics about L.A.’s silicon-and-botox-addicted Barbie dolls, and draws them still closer by asking that they repeat the final line to his hook-laden driving song “Eh Man” along with him, “I eat with my hands. I drive with my knees.” By the end of his set, it’s obvious that he’s gained hundreds of new fans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>“I duck into the parking garage, hoping to escape. But my boots echo on the slick cement, broadcasting my location to anyone listening. And I know they are listening.” So run the opening sentences of Lisa Lutz’s wry novel, \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b>, and the people listening and forcing the main character into a dangerous car chase are HER PARENTS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We recognize Isabel Spellman’s voice immediately. With her staccato rhythms and deliberate vernacularisms, her street-wise pose and her penchant for grungy “denim and leather,” Isabel’s persona lies somewhere between “Dirty Harry and Nancy Drew.” But Isabel’s true antecedents lie deeper in the past, in that genre known as “hardboiled” or “noir.” Like her precursors, Isabel is a private investigator. And like the characters who populate \u003cb>The Maltese Falcon\u003c/b> and \u003cb>The Big Sleep\u003c/b>, Isabel lives on the margins, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to assimilate into the mainstream. Readers will recognize elements of their favorite gumshoes (from Lew Archer to Sam Spade) in Isabel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although readers can draw ready parallels between Lutz and Raymond Chandler, or Lutz and Dashiell Hammett (especially since Lutz and Hammett both engage San Francisco’s social and physical geography), \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b> lies closer, in spirit and intent, to Ross McDonald’s psycho-thrillers. The book bears a strong resemblance to McDonald’s \u003cb>Black Money\u003c/b>, one of the first to feature the detective Lew Archer. McDonald, writing in the 1960s, was more interested in writing sociology. He remains exterior to his characters, weaving a dense socio-economic tapestry around a handful of archetypes. Lutz, however, turns towards the interior, and she gives us action and emotion in equal measure. In contrast to her hard-edge forebears, one might call Lutz’s particular approach to the thriller “soft-boiled.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b> borrows its structure from the hard-boiled thriller, but family constitutes Lutz’s greatest, most insistent theme. Isabel works for the family business, Spellman Investigations. The Spellman family has 5 members (Albert, Olivia, David, Isabel, and Rae), plus one (Uncle Ray). The Spellmans are a lovable but dysfunctional family, working out their family issues with old fashioned tools of the gumshoe trade. One family member’s sugar habit might trigger an all night stake out, a teenage infraction could turn into an interrogation session in the basement of the Spellman family home. Then there is Isabel, whose problematic notions of femininity are a constant source of humor (and humiliation) for the narrator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a twenty-first century thriller, taking place in twenty-first century San Francisco, \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b> addresses both gender and family issues with directness and empathy. Gender (and trouble with conventional gender models) figures from the very beginning of \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b>, the moment we first encounter Isabel Spellman. Her gender confusion, illustrated by her commitment to clunky boots and her aversion to commitments of a more romantic nature, prefigures the book’s larger themes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The thriller genre, with its set archetypes and devices, sets the stage for Lutz’s investigation of the nuclear family and its uncertain loyalties. Why do we love? And more importantly, in an age of “urban tribes” and shifting personal allegiances, why do we continue to love our families? While earlier writers like Chandler and McDonald may have favored Freudian plotlines, Lutz gives her readers a warmer, fuzzier picture of humanity. Family, for Lutz, is a source of pain, but never an agent. Though the book grapples with serious issues, and delivers the occasional dark moment, Lutz never loses her light touch. Like little sister Rae’s beloved sugary confections, \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b> goes down easy. (And, say other members of the KQED Arts & Culture blogger collective, it’s a great book to take to the beach!)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lisa Lutz will be reading at Stacey’s Books in San Francisco at 12:30pm on March 26, 2007 and at the Capitola Book & Cafe in Capitola that same evening at 7:30pm.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>“I duck into the parking garage, hoping to escape. But my boots echo on the slick cement, broadcasting my location to anyone listening. And I know they are listening.” So run the opening sentences of Lisa Lutz’s wry novel, \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b>, and the people listening and forcing the main character into a dangerous car chase are HER PARENTS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We recognize Isabel Spellman’s voice immediately. With her staccato rhythms and deliberate vernacularisms, her street-wise pose and her penchant for grungy “denim and leather,” Isabel’s persona lies somewhere between “Dirty Harry and Nancy Drew.” But Isabel’s true antecedents lie deeper in the past, in that genre known as “hardboiled” or “noir.” Like her precursors, Isabel is a private investigator. And like the characters who populate \u003cb>The Maltese Falcon\u003c/b> and \u003cb>The Big Sleep\u003c/b>, Isabel lives on the margins, unable (or perhaps unwilling) to assimilate into the mainstream. Readers will recognize elements of their favorite gumshoes (from Lew Archer to Sam Spade) in Isabel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although readers can draw ready parallels between Lutz and Raymond Chandler, or Lutz and Dashiell Hammett (especially since Lutz and Hammett both engage San Francisco’s social and physical geography), \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b> lies closer, in spirit and intent, to Ross McDonald’s psycho-thrillers. The book bears a strong resemblance to McDonald’s \u003cb>Black Money\u003c/b>, one of the first to feature the detective Lew Archer. McDonald, writing in the 1960s, was more interested in writing sociology. He remains exterior to his characters, weaving a dense socio-economic tapestry around a handful of archetypes. Lutz, however, turns towards the interior, and she gives us action and emotion in equal measure. In contrast to her hard-edge forebears, one might call Lutz’s particular approach to the thriller “soft-boiled.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b> borrows its structure from the hard-boiled thriller, but family constitutes Lutz’s greatest, most insistent theme. Isabel works for the family business, Spellman Investigations. The Spellman family has 5 members (Albert, Olivia, David, Isabel, and Rae), plus one (Uncle Ray). The Spellmans are a lovable but dysfunctional family, working out their family issues with old fashioned tools of the gumshoe trade. One family member’s sugar habit might trigger an all night stake out, a teenage infraction could turn into an interrogation session in the basement of the Spellman family home. Then there is Isabel, whose problematic notions of femininity are a constant source of humor (and humiliation) for the narrator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a twenty-first century thriller, taking place in twenty-first century San Francisco, \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b> addresses both gender and family issues with directness and empathy. Gender (and trouble with conventional gender models) figures from the very beginning of \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b>, the moment we first encounter Isabel Spellman. Her gender confusion, illustrated by her commitment to clunky boots and her aversion to commitments of a more romantic nature, prefigures the book’s larger themes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The thriller genre, with its set archetypes and devices, sets the stage for Lutz’s investigation of the nuclear family and its uncertain loyalties. Why do we love? And more importantly, in an age of “urban tribes” and shifting personal allegiances, why do we continue to love our families? While earlier writers like Chandler and McDonald may have favored Freudian plotlines, Lutz gives her readers a warmer, fuzzier picture of humanity. Family, for Lutz, is a source of pain, but never an agent. Though the book grapples with serious issues, and delivers the occasional dark moment, Lutz never loses her light touch. Like little sister Rae’s beloved sugary confections, \u003cb>The Spellman Files\u003c/b> goes down easy. (And, say other members of the KQED Arts & Culture blogger collective, it’s a great book to take to the beach!)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lisa Lutz will be reading at Stacey’s Books in San Francisco at 12:30pm on March 26, 2007 and at the Capitola Book & Cafe in Capitola that same evening at 7:30pm.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>I got a few odd sidelong glances from my fellow coffee shop patrons the other morning. But I couldn’t blame them. I was, after all, hunched over a book and alternately biting my lip, putting a hand over my mouth, and even, in the final few pages, wiping stray tears from the corners of my eyes. I am not usually such an emotionally demonstrative reader, but then again, not every novel is Daniel Alarcón’s \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b>, a book so insanely good that I’ve been forcing it on everyone I know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This debut novel takes place somewhere in Latin America, in a nation of battle-scarred and soul-bruised people, living in the uneasy aftermath of a decade-long civil war. It could be Alarcón’s native Peru, but it could also be Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, or any other place that has suffered through a “Dirty War” — we find out only that it has mountains, it has jungle, and it has an ever-expanding ring of slums around its capital city. The slums are swelling daily, as the country’s remote villages are abandoned in droves by people seeking work. In order to reunite with loved ones and friends who have already made the trip, they rely on their favorite radio program: \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b>, hosted by the honey-voiced Miss Norma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each week on her show, Norma reads out the names of the lost and the missing, many of whom eventually find each other in heartwarming, carefully orchestrated reunions. Norma, legendary for her smooth-as-silk delivery, is a comforting and constant presence to those who have misplaced their loved ones in the great scrum of the global economy. No unpleasantness makes it to the air, the regulations make sure of that. Alarcón writes, “She relied on the station’s policy, which was also the government’s policy: to read good news with indifference and to make bad news sound hopeful…in her vocal caresses, unemployment figures read like bittersweet laments, declarations of war like love letters. News of mudslides became awestruck meditations on the mysteries of nature…” One topic is strictly off-limits: the long war between the government and a rebel faction from the jungles known as the IL, which eventually ended in a suppression of the rebellionand a return to something like the status quo. Although her show ostensibly exists to reunite the lost, there are names that cannot be spoken over the air. One of them is the name of Norma’s own husband Rey, an IL sympathizer who disappeared without a trace in the final days of the war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, a little boy named Victor is dropped off at Norma’s studio — a kid from one of those remote and quickly emptying villages, 1797 (all the villages in the country have had their names replaced with numbers by the government). Victor has been entrusted with a list of all the names of 1797’s missing, and has been sent to get help from the seemingly all-powerful Miss Norma. At first, she is none too pleased to be saddled with this haunted boy and his carefully written sheet of names. He’s simply another pleading and lonely voice. But when she sees that he comes from 1797, a village that played a role in Rey’s disappearance, she agrees to look at his list. When she sees her husband’s name on the list — not “Rey” but his other, secret name, the one he was known by during his clandestine IL missions — she realizes Victor holds information that could tell her what finally happened to her husband, and whether he might still be out there, listening to her on the radio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Names, namelessness, the speaking out loud of names and keeping silent about them: this is the thread that runs from one end of Alarcón’s novel to the other. The country and its capital city have no name. The villages have had their names taken away and replaced with numbers. Rey’s other name, the one under which he wrote incendiary articles on behalf of the IL in the early days of the war, is never spoken aloud in the book. Alarcón is a master at withholding information; the emotional resonance of \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b> comes from all the things that we aren’t told. We never find out what the ideological differencesare between the IL and the sitting government. The term “IL” stands for “Illegitimate Legion” — a name that tells us nothing of their alleged cause. “The war had become, if it wasn’t from the very beginning, an indecipherable text,” Rey muses to himself in the ninth year of the conflict. “Had it begun with a voided election? Or the murder of a popular senator? Who could remember now? They had all been student protesters, had felt the startling power of a mob, shouting as one chorus of voices -— but that was years ago, and times had changed. No one still believed all that, did they?” The loyalist soldiers commit hideous atrocities against the suspected IL members they arrest. The IL insurgents commit atrocities against anyone suspected of being a government collaborator -— all for what end? We are never told. Alarcón withholds any detail which would have allowed an easy out. He never lets us hang the labels “good guy” and “bad guy” around the necks of the parties involved. He gives the reader space to make the realization: how could there possibly be a “winner”? How could a war like this ever actually “end”?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve read other fictional works that dealt with South and Central American conflicts: \u003cb>The Inhabited Woman\u003c/b> by former Sandinista government official Gioconda Belli, for example, mixes magic and fantasy in with tale of a young Salvadoran upper-class woman’s radicalization. Argentinian author Marta Traba wrote a novel in the mid-1980’s that is little known in the English-speaking world, \u003cb>Conversacion Del Sur\u003c/b> (published in English as \u003cb>Mothers and Shadows\u003c/b>), which is written as one long, harrowing conversation between two women huddled in a house in Montevideo, Uruguay, waiting to be killed. Better known to American audiences is Argentine-Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman’s play \u003cb>Death and the Maiden\u003c/b>, in which a woman kidnaps the doctor who tortured her in prison. But I was always able to preserve some sort of intellectual distance from the story. Alarcón collapses that distance to nothing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps partly this is because \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b> is an English-language novel, with no deadening layer of translation between us and the devastating material. But mostly it’s because history has caught up to us, and the strange government doublespeak and obvious, transparent lies don’t seem like an exotic fiction. The first time Rey is captured, he is sent to a prison called “The Moon,” where he undergoes a hideous torture that Alarcón describes in brief, devastating glimpses. The Moon is a place that does not officially exist, according to the government. But even if it does, no one is sent there who wasn’t a terrorist that deserved it. The acknowledgement that our own government holds “ghost detainees” at “black sites” comes readily to mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With any book that attempts to cover a long span of years and detail the lives of multiple characters, I usually reserve my judgment about the book’s success until after I’ve gotten all the way to the end. This is because most authors, especially the young and show-offy, tend to fumble right where it matters: the conclusion. This is the point where, usually, all the big messy subplots and minor characters are supposed to come together in one big crescendo of transcendent catharsis, or something. Alarcón deftly avoids this trap by acknowledging, at all stages, the messy unknowableness of this nameless country and its tangle of history. To tie everything up into a neat little package would have been a grave disservice to the characters. Some of \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b>‘s characters find what they are looking for, some don’t. All of them have to find a way to continue moving forward, and in their way, they do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel Alarcón’s impressive list of credentials (of which Iowa Writer’s Workshop grad and Fulbright Scholar are only two) is richly deserved. These days, every debut novelist is met with manufactured hype and hubbub -— it’s easy to forget that sometimes a new young writer is capable of generating a buzz simply because of his enormous talent. Alarcón is the real deal, and if we as readers are lucky, \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b> is just the very beginning of a long career. I hope to be moved to tears in front of strangers in coffee shops for years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.kqed.org/arts/writersblock/episode.jsp?id=13747\">The Writers’ Block\u003c/a> — Listen to Daniel Alarcón read an excerpt from \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I got a few odd sidelong glances from my fellow coffee shop patrons the other morning. But I couldn’t blame them. I was, after all, hunched over a book and alternately biting my lip, putting a hand over my mouth, and even, in the final few pages, wiping stray tears from the corners of my eyes. I am not usually such an emotionally demonstrative reader, but then again, not every novel is Daniel Alarcón’s \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b>, a book so insanely good that I’ve been forcing it on everyone I know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This debut novel takes place somewhere in Latin America, in a nation of battle-scarred and soul-bruised people, living in the uneasy aftermath of a decade-long civil war. It could be Alarcón’s native Peru, but it could also be Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, or any other place that has suffered through a “Dirty War” — we find out only that it has mountains, it has jungle, and it has an ever-expanding ring of slums around its capital city. The slums are swelling daily, as the country’s remote villages are abandoned in droves by people seeking work. In order to reunite with loved ones and friends who have already made the trip, they rely on their favorite radio program: \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b>, hosted by the honey-voiced Miss Norma.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each week on her show, Norma reads out the names of the lost and the missing, many of whom eventually find each other in heartwarming, carefully orchestrated reunions. Norma, legendary for her smooth-as-silk delivery, is a comforting and constant presence to those who have misplaced their loved ones in the great scrum of the global economy. No unpleasantness makes it to the air, the regulations make sure of that. Alarcón writes, “She relied on the station’s policy, which was also the government’s policy: to read good news with indifference and to make bad news sound hopeful…in her vocal caresses, unemployment figures read like bittersweet laments, declarations of war like love letters. News of mudslides became awestruck meditations on the mysteries of nature…” One topic is strictly off-limits: the long war between the government and a rebel faction from the jungles known as the IL, which eventually ended in a suppression of the rebellionand a return to something like the status quo. Although her show ostensibly exists to reunite the lost, there are names that cannot be spoken over the air. One of them is the name of Norma’s own husband Rey, an IL sympathizer who disappeared without a trace in the final days of the war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, a little boy named Victor is dropped off at Norma’s studio — a kid from one of those remote and quickly emptying villages, 1797 (all the villages in the country have had their names replaced with numbers by the government). Victor has been entrusted with a list of all the names of 1797’s missing, and has been sent to get help from the seemingly all-powerful Miss Norma. At first, she is none too pleased to be saddled with this haunted boy and his carefully written sheet of names. He’s simply another pleading and lonely voice. But when she sees that he comes from 1797, a village that played a role in Rey’s disappearance, she agrees to look at his list. When she sees her husband’s name on the list — not “Rey” but his other, secret name, the one he was known by during his clandestine IL missions — she realizes Victor holds information that could tell her what finally happened to her husband, and whether he might still be out there, listening to her on the radio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Names, namelessness, the speaking out loud of names and keeping silent about them: this is the thread that runs from one end of Alarcón’s novel to the other. The country and its capital city have no name. The villages have had their names taken away and replaced with numbers. Rey’s other name, the one under which he wrote incendiary articles on behalf of the IL in the early days of the war, is never spoken aloud in the book. Alarcón is a master at withholding information; the emotional resonance of \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b> comes from all the things that we aren’t told. We never find out what the ideological differencesare between the IL and the sitting government. The term “IL” stands for “Illegitimate Legion” — a name that tells us nothing of their alleged cause. “The war had become, if it wasn’t from the very beginning, an indecipherable text,” Rey muses to himself in the ninth year of the conflict. “Had it begun with a voided election? Or the murder of a popular senator? Who could remember now? They had all been student protesters, had felt the startling power of a mob, shouting as one chorus of voices -— but that was years ago, and times had changed. No one still believed all that, did they?” The loyalist soldiers commit hideous atrocities against the suspected IL members they arrest. The IL insurgents commit atrocities against anyone suspected of being a government collaborator -— all for what end? We are never told. Alarcón withholds any detail which would have allowed an easy out. He never lets us hang the labels “good guy” and “bad guy” around the necks of the parties involved. He gives the reader space to make the realization: how could there possibly be a “winner”? How could a war like this ever actually “end”?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve read other fictional works that dealt with South and Central American conflicts: \u003cb>The Inhabited Woman\u003c/b> by former Sandinista government official Gioconda Belli, for example, mixes magic and fantasy in with tale of a young Salvadoran upper-class woman’s radicalization. Argentinian author Marta Traba wrote a novel in the mid-1980’s that is little known in the English-speaking world, \u003cb>Conversacion Del Sur\u003c/b> (published in English as \u003cb>Mothers and Shadows\u003c/b>), which is written as one long, harrowing conversation between two women huddled in a house in Montevideo, Uruguay, waiting to be killed. Better known to American audiences is Argentine-Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman’s play \u003cb>Death and the Maiden\u003c/b>, in which a woman kidnaps the doctor who tortured her in prison. But I was always able to preserve some sort of intellectual distance from the story. Alarcón collapses that distance to nothing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps partly this is because \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b> is an English-language novel, with no deadening layer of translation between us and the devastating material. But mostly it’s because history has caught up to us, and the strange government doublespeak and obvious, transparent lies don’t seem like an exotic fiction. The first time Rey is captured, he is sent to a prison called “The Moon,” where he undergoes a hideous torture that Alarcón describes in brief, devastating glimpses. The Moon is a place that does not officially exist, according to the government. But even if it does, no one is sent there who wasn’t a terrorist that deserved it. The acknowledgement that our own government holds “ghost detainees” at “black sites” comes readily to mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With any book that attempts to cover a long span of years and detail the lives of multiple characters, I usually reserve my judgment about the book’s success until after I’ve gotten all the way to the end. This is because most authors, especially the young and show-offy, tend to fumble right where it matters: the conclusion. This is the point where, usually, all the big messy subplots and minor characters are supposed to come together in one big crescendo of transcendent catharsis, or something. Alarcón deftly avoids this trap by acknowledging, at all stages, the messy unknowableness of this nameless country and its tangle of history. To tie everything up into a neat little package would have been a grave disservice to the characters. Some of \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b>‘s characters find what they are looking for, some don’t. All of them have to find a way to continue moving forward, and in their way, they do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Daniel Alarcón’s impressive list of credentials (of which Iowa Writer’s Workshop grad and Fulbright Scholar are only two) is richly deserved. These days, every debut novelist is met with manufactured hype and hubbub -— it’s easy to forget that sometimes a new young writer is capable of generating a buzz simply because of his enormous talent. Alarcón is the real deal, and if we as readers are lucky, \u003cb>Lost City Radio\u003c/b> is just the very beginning of a long career. I hope to be moved to tears in front of strangers in coffee shops for years to come.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>More than enough has been said in the very recent past about the veracity of truthfulness in the literary memoir. I believe in the genre, I believe that the stories we tell about ourselves are always going to be colored by experience and may not stand up to the same scrutiny as a true autobiography would. I find the line between an “autobiographical novel” and a “literary memoir” to be fine and permeable and not necessarily relevant to the transmission of experience. I wish someone had bought James Frey’s work as the novel he originally shopped around; it would have saved everyone a lot of time and trouble. The controversy didn’t take away from the experience I watched customers have reading and talking about the book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I approached \u003cb>Saving Angelfish\u003c/b>, a new first novel from Los Angeles writer Michele Matheson, the same way I approach anything billed as closely based on the author’s life; my only question was, “Do I get any real sense of experience out of the story?” In the case of Matheson’s achingly true descent, I more than do. Her novel of addiction, of coming close to bottoming out in the strangely surreal sunny city of angels, rings as true as any memoir I’ve read. This is a story told by a person that could only have lived it, not in a page-by-verifiable-page kind of living, but in a “my life, my memories, my story” way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maxella Gordon is a product of a Hollywood family, not a big-star kind of family with photographers documenting every step down a celebrity’s child staircase, but the child of working class Hollywood, people in the industry who work almost anonymously for years acquiring stories and scars along the way. Her mother and father are divorced yet inseparable, united mostly in pain about their daughter’s struggle with every kind of drug she can find. Maxilla’s mother breakfasts on gin-soaked dried fruit. Maxilla’s drug of choice, if choice is the right word, is heroin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The drug world is a funny place; you find yourself calling people “friend” who’s only connection to you is your connection. Maxilla is close to a variety of strange, colorful and ultimately selfish people who are there for her when times are good, but will steal her stash and leave her stranded when times are tight or their own demons rise up. Maxella herself lives in a world stopped mid-plot, always looking for the next route from low to very high. She’s guided through this world by a stolen talking Christmas angel, a voice of reason and hope from the glove box, under the seat or in her pocket. Her angel is a perfect narrator for her voyage, tattered yet hopeful, bright yet cheap.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is no happy ending in \u003cb>Saving Angelfish\u003c/b>; there is a hopeful ending, a point at which I could see a change in the path Maxella is heading down. Like Alice, trying every “eat me” and “drink me” she can, looking for her way out of the hole she’s in, Maxella has reached a door she has the wherewithal to step through. We hope the character has the power. I’m sure Matheson has found the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Galley Slave Galley Watch\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\u003cb>Un Lun Dun\u003c/b> is China Mieville’s first journey into young adult fiction and he has brought with him is usual strangeness, astute politics, eye for the friendly grotesque and, above all, his ability to craft a city unlike any other. His story of pollution gone amok is an ode to the powers of the sidekick and a parable of heroism and teamwork for any and all readers. Due in March, from Bantam.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>Alec is in love, and he won’t listen to reason. Never mind that in his post-apocalyptic world, girls are bloodthirsty zombies roaming the sewers to devour young men — love is blind. And now he finally has someone to join him in a game of Scrabble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s amoré in\u003cb>Project: Romantic\u003c/b>, a new comics anthology out to rekindle the flame for love stories with fresh plots and stylish art. In the 1940s and ’50s, moony tales led the market, with titles like \u003cb>Young Romance\u003c/b> making manicured palms sweat across the country. But as the ’60s cultural revolution made it clear that there was more to romance than angling to marry your dream man, comics couldn’t keep up, and the genre essentially vanished. Seeing the decline, \u003ca href=\"http://www.adhousebooks.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">AdHouse Books\u003c/a> stepped in to fluff, as it were, the romance comic, with the fresh spin of alt comics innovation, i.e. the undead, talking hamsters, and hipsters with broken hearts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> A few pieces in the collection miss the mark, but most of the 33 comics deliver with witty stories and charming art. \u003ca href=\"http://www.%20http://jwcotter.com/\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Joshua Cotter\u003c/a>‘s “Kingdom Animalia, Illustrated” offers a faux-scientific guide to mating rituals as modeled by animals (I was a little ashamed by just how much the octopus’s guide to safe sex made me giggle). \u003ca href=\"http://www.h4.dion.ne.jp/~mjdotcom/home.html\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Junko Mizuno\u003c/a>‘s signature dolls flirt amidst candy-colored hearts and flowers. Mizuno’s hyper-cute art is slick and appealing, but never moved me much beyond, “ooh, pretty.” I’d always wondered if she had any observations to make with her stylish characters. Yet this surreal little comic charmed me. Mizuno has her lonely, single girl manically stuffing down pastries and hamburgers when she suspects her boyfriend has left her. As she’s eating her way through the pain, she slices into a steaming turkey, only to (hurray!) find her lover hidden inside. The two then literally fly off into the sunset on a magical floating bed, ready to tame another kind of appetite. Now that’s one plot that could have spiced up the whining between Carrie and Mr. Big.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indie comics’ signature low tech aesthetic is here, too — adorable blobs with dots for eyes find happily ever after and sketchy doodles canoodle in pencil and crayon. And if your experience with romance leans towards the bitter side, most pieces build to a smirk more than a swoon. Randall Christopher pinpoints the difficulty of crafting a love story free of clichés, while evil geniuses trade winks over cloaking devices and secret laboratories in Joel Priddy’s “Sweetie ‘n’ Me.” Even \u003ca href=\"http://www.josegaribaldi.com\" target=\"offsite\" rel=\"noopener\">Jose Garibaldi\u003c/a>‘s touching bedtime story told between lovers includes a breakdancing robot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hip irony aside, this modern take on romance comics does offer a welcome historical comparison. As the book’s introduction points out, popular 1950’s romances had bombshells pining over quarterbacks and warned single girls against being an expert in “technical things.” The closest \u003cb>Project: Romantic\u003c/b> comes to advice is a look at how to tell your parents you’ve gotten engaged to your boyfriend. That is, your boyfriend, who has turned into a bear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>Tis the season… \u003cb>Miracle on 34th Street\u003c/b> has gone into constant rotation, stiffly-animated characters are glowing noses and practicing dentistry on the network channels and to my great relief, every version of \u003cb>A Christmas Carol\u003c/b> is starting to show up on small screens and stages everywhere. I’m a huge fan of all of them. I have my favorite film verson, and can rant extensively about which one and why, but that is not really my point in this column. My point this week is the body of literature based on that one specific, now practically ancient book by Charles Dickens, \u003cb>A Christmas Carol\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There have been several really entertaining new versions of the story and its characters in the last few years. Louis Bayard’s \u003cb>Mr. Timothy\u003c/b> sets a now-grown Timothy Cratchit loose in a very atmospheric Victorian London, chasing the white slave trade and sending a foggy chill up my neck. Gregory Maguire’s \u003cb>Lost\u003c/b> sets the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge in a modern missing person story; nobody can tweak our common cultural mythos like Maguire. Mark Hazard Osmun’s \u003cb>Marley’s Ghost\u003c/b> gives us some back story, some explanation of exactly how Jacob Marley came to be able to come back that one Christmas Eve and give Scrooge another chance. These are all entertaining, all fitting nicely with the universe Dickens created and all worth a read. I know there are more of these stories out there; these few are the ones that come most easily to my mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a new entry into the canon, \u003cb>A Christmas Caroline\u003c/b> by Kyle Smith. This story of a not-so-typical New York Christmas could be thumbnailed as \u003cb>Scrooge Wears Prada\u003c/b>, but that would not do the story justice. Smith, a film critic for the New York Post, has a great ear for dialog and eye for character. His Scrooge, Carolyn, works for a trendy New York fashion magazine, happily abusing her assistant and anyone else in range. There is, of course, a Tiny Tim in this book, a 6′ 7″ pro football player with a serious crush on Carolyn and a greater talent for butchering clichés than splitting goalposts. Smith has also inserted characters from other Dickens stories, all thinly veiled in New York personalities and, usually, fabulous clothes. \u003cb>A Christmas Caroline\u003c/b> will bear rereading if only to pick out the other Dickens references Smith has thrown in. Like all good versions of the tale, \u003cb>A Christmas Caroline\u003c/b> also has ghosts, the requisite four to be exact. Carolyn’s long night begins with a visit from the first of these, her dead roommate, Carly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would be a mistake to think that the ghosts are the most important part of any version of \u003cb>A Christmas Carol\u003c/b>. The most important thing in the story, the thing that has to be there for the story to work, is the epiphany. That is the moment when the character, whether it is the original Scrooge or the current Carolyn, comes back from the edge of insanity a changed person. (Alastair Sim sets the on-film standard for this, and yes, it is my favorite version.) Carolyn makes that journey, going from shallow fashionista, a spoiled accessory buyer with an apartment full of free stuff, to self-aware and sympathetic human overnight, just as the story says she should. I think that’s why the story has survived so long. We can see anyone, including ourselves, making that journey. At least we hope we can\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is nothing, of course, that can take the place of the original book. If you have never read \u003cb>A Christmas Carol\u003c/b>, please do. It is, as the book says, never too late. If you have, but not recently, read it again. Better yet, read it aloud to someone young, or to a group, or as a group. This slender book is where much of what we think of as Christmas comes from, and it is one story that really never gets old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>GALLEY SLAVE GALLEY WATCH:\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\u003cb>Heart Shaped Box\u003c/b> by Joe Hill.\u003cbr>Wow. I can probably count the number of books that have really given me a scare on the fingers of one thumbless hand, with room to spare. Hill’s story of a retired rock star who buys a haunted suit on eBay and gets far more than he bargained for is one of those few special books. Due in February, from Morrow.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Tis the season… \u003cb>Miracle on 34th Street\u003c/b> has gone into constant rotation, stiffly-animated characters are glowing noses and practicing dentistry on the network channels and to my great relief, every version of \u003cb>A Christmas Carol\u003c/b> is starting to show up on small screens and stages everywhere. I’m a huge fan of all of them. I have my favorite film verson, and can rant extensively about which one and why, but that is not really my point in this column. My point this week is the body of literature based on that one specific, now practically ancient book by Charles Dickens, \u003cb>A Christmas Carol\u003c/b>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There have been several really entertaining new versions of the story and its characters in the last few years. Louis Bayard’s \u003cb>Mr. Timothy\u003c/b> sets a now-grown Timothy Cratchit loose in a very atmospheric Victorian London, chasing the white slave trade and sending a foggy chill up my neck. Gregory Maguire’s \u003cb>Lost\u003c/b> sets the ghost of Ebenezer Scrooge in a modern missing person story; nobody can tweak our common cultural mythos like Maguire. Mark Hazard Osmun’s \u003cb>Marley’s Ghost\u003c/b> gives us some back story, some explanation of exactly how Jacob Marley came to be able to come back that one Christmas Eve and give Scrooge another chance. These are all entertaining, all fitting nicely with the universe Dickens created and all worth a read. I know there are more of these stories out there; these few are the ones that come most easily to my mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a new entry into the canon, \u003cb>A Christmas Caroline\u003c/b> by Kyle Smith. This story of a not-so-typical New York Christmas could be thumbnailed as \u003cb>Scrooge Wears Prada\u003c/b>, but that would not do the story justice. Smith, a film critic for the New York Post, has a great ear for dialog and eye for character. His Scrooge, Carolyn, works for a trendy New York fashion magazine, happily abusing her assistant and anyone else in range. There is, of course, a Tiny Tim in this book, a 6′ 7″ pro football player with a serious crush on Carolyn and a greater talent for butchering clichés than splitting goalposts. Smith has also inserted characters from other Dickens stories, all thinly veiled in New York personalities and, usually, fabulous clothes. \u003cb>A Christmas Caroline\u003c/b> will bear rereading if only to pick out the other Dickens references Smith has thrown in. Like all good versions of the tale, \u003cb>A Christmas Caroline\u003c/b> also has ghosts, the requisite four to be exact. Carolyn’s long night begins with a visit from the first of these, her dead roommate, Carly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would be a mistake to think that the ghosts are the most important part of any version of \u003cb>A Christmas Carol\u003c/b>. The most important thing in the story, the thing that has to be there for the story to work, is the epiphany. That is the moment when the character, whether it is the original Scrooge or the current Carolyn, comes back from the edge of insanity a changed person. (Alastair Sim sets the on-film standard for this, and yes, it is my favorite version.) Carolyn makes that journey, going from shallow fashionista, a spoiled accessory buyer with an apartment full of free stuff, to self-aware and sympathetic human overnight, just as the story says she should. I think that’s why the story has survived so long. We can see anyone, including ourselves, making that journey. At least we hope we can\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is nothing, of course, that can take the place of the original book. If you have never read \u003cb>A Christmas Carol\u003c/b>, please do. It is, as the book says, never too late. If you have, but not recently, read it again. Better yet, read it aloud to someone young, or to a group, or as a group. This slender book is where much of what we think of as Christmas comes from, and it is one story that really never gets old.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>GALLEY SLAVE GALLEY WATCH:\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\u003cb>Heart Shaped Box\u003c/b> by Joe Hill.\u003cbr>Wow. I can probably count the number of books that have really given me a scare on the fingers of one thumbless hand, with room to spare. Hill’s story of a retired rock star who buys a haunted suit on eBay and gets far more than he bargained for is one of those few special books. Due in February, from Morrow.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cb>The Ghost at the Table\u003c/b> by Suzanne Berne was not actually my original choice for a review this week. The onset of rain had put me in the mood for a dark-and-stormy thriller, and I had one all lined up to write about. I will probably still write about it, as it had everything long nights and bad weather need. The onset of the holidays, though, once again trumped the end of the world as I found I couldn’t get Berne’s novel of Thanksgiving and family dysfunction out of my mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cynthia Fiske likes her life. She’s a writer, author of a series of books for young adults called \u003cb>Sisters of History\u003c/b>, novels about famous people narrated by their sisters. She has a great apartment on Dolores Street in San Francisco and good friends, ones that make up the kind of adopted family that keeps us sane (or at least let us go crazy in a good way.) Currently she’s working on a book about the daughters of Mark Twain, daughters she can identify with both because the Twain family lived near to where she grew up and because the dynamics of the two families are more than a little similar. Cynthia’s mother died when she was young, and she has been estranged from her father and his new wife for years. She doesn’t welcome the call from her sister, begging her to come back to Concord for a Thanksgiving family reunion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back east she does go, convinced by her sister that everything will be great, and the fact that she will be close to the Twain family home where she can research her next book. She knows as she goes that her father has been ill and will be moving into a nursing home over the holiday. At least, she thinks he will. Her sister hasn’t been exactly straight with her about that, or about anything. The holiday becomes one to survive, to careen through from crisis to crisis. Distance has let relationships go dormant, suspended, unresolved. Presence requires the family to learn, or learn again, exactly who is at the table. Everyone has their own baggage, all opened and tossed out in the room to mingle and knot in a pile of aired dirty laundry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Suzanne Berne is a tremendous writer. Orange Prize winner for an earlier book, \u003cb>A Crime in the Neighborhood\u003c/b>, she easily rises to the task of immersing us in the frustration and emotion that threaten to overwhelm Cynthia as she navigates the holiday season. As more deceptions, half lies and forgotten truths emerge over the long weekend family allegiances change, shifting constantly until the moment the holiday is over, leaving everything changed and everything exactly the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No matter what kind of holiday you have, there is something in \u003cb>The Ghost at the Table\u003c/b> that will remind you of yourself, your friends and your family. It gives us a holiday at once worse than our own and better, strange and familiar, surreal and utterly real. It’s comforting somehow to immerse yourself in a family that feels true both despite and because of its flaws, and in it see the strength of family bonds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Galley Slave Galley Watch\u003c/b>\u003cbr>\u003cb>Finn\u003c/b> by Jon Clinch is a powerful and unforgettable look at a man mentioned by Twain but never explained, Pap Finn, the father of Huck. Brutal, angry, smart and deeply flawed, Pap Finn squats in an abandoned shack on the Mississippi, harvesting the river for fish or flotsam to keep him in whisky, and maybe some food. Estranged from his family, his father and his son, he plots to get the riches he thinks he deserves, spiraling violently away from both in the process. I couldn’t put it down and couldn’t look away even if I’d wanted to. Brilliant, and due in early Spring from Random House.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "\u003cb>The Ghost at the Table\u003c/b> by Suzanne Berne was not actually my original choice for a review this week. The onset of rain had put me in the mood for a dark-and-stormy thriller, and I had one all lined up to write about. I will probably still write about it, as it had everything long nights and bad weather need. The onset of the holidays, though, once again trumped the end of the world as I found I couldn't get Berne's novel of Thanksgiving and family dysfunction out of my mind.",
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
"airtime": "SUN 9pm-10pm",
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"meta": {
"site": "radio",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.commonwealthclub.org/podcasts",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"id": "here-and-now",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/hiddenbrain.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
"subscribe": {
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Hidden-Brain-p787503/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510308/podcast.xml"
}
},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
"imageAlt": "KQED Hyphenación",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/xtTd",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id73801135",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/category/perspectives/feed/",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvcGVyc3BlY3RpdmVzL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BlcnNwZWN0aXZlcy9mZWVkLw"
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},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/M4f5",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Planet-Money-p164680/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
}
},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Political Breakdown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"subscribe": {
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/572155894/political-breakdown",
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