2025 books, 4/25:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Choosing to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today, instead of allowing this inauguration, this administration, to shadow him.
Read this letter.
2025 reads, 1/25:
“You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.”
A necessary read. James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time is a short, yet powerful pair of letters written in 1963, one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The first of the two letters, titled “My Dungeon Shook,” is a letter to Baldwin’s 14-year-old nephew, where he shares his experience of being Black in the United States. It’s a primary example of how Black children must learn about race much earlier than their white counterparts, an eye-opening fact I learned from Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
The second letter, “Down at the Cross,” takes up most of the novel. In this letter, not particularly aimed at anyone, he discusses his Harlem upbringing, and the effect of the church on his life and on the Black community. It’s filled with memories, anecdotes, and personal philosophies. I could see how, being published in 1963, this was a shock to the white-dominated literary world, who were either unaware or ignorant of the civil rights movement.
“This is the message that has spread through streets and tenements and prisons, through the narcotics wards, and past the filth and sadism of mental hospitals to a people from whom everything has been taken away, including, most crucially, their sense of their own worth.”
This is my first book of Baldwin’s, so I didn’t know what to expect going in, but his voice is passionate. It comes off the page, and I imagine him speaking clearly and confidently about what he’s writing. There's fury, but it’s not a rant: it’s calculated. And although there is this deep personality in his prose, I learned a lot in these one hundred pages. He recalls primary accounts of historical figures such as Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, and discusses the Nation of Islam. These firsthand accounts of life as a Black man in the early twentieth century are worth more to me than facts from a textbook.
I recommend this wholeheartedly as a necessary read for anyone. We need to open our eyes more often to the world around us, to the experiences of others, whether in the present or the past. I will certainly be reading more of Baldwin’s works from here on forward.
“The fear that I heard in my father’s voice, for example, when he realized that I really believed I could do anything a white boy could do, and had every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when one of us was ill or had fallen down the stairs or strayed too far from the house. It was another fear, a fear that the child, in challenging the white world’s assumptions, was putting himself in the path of destruction.”
2024 reads, 20/22:
“Who should be held accountable for a shared history of violence? It was a question that was dogging Northern Ireland as a whole.”
What initially drew me to this book was the TV show Derry Girls, a masterful (and incredibly funny) portrayal of life in 1990s Northern Ireland. The show juxtaposes the realities of the Troubles with the high school “problems” of a group of friends. But since the show is primarily a comedy, I was left wanting to better understand that era of Ireland. Even before Derry Girls, I had only the vaguest idea of what the Troubles were about, admittedly only through songs such as The Cranberries’ Zombie, or U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday. All I knew was that there was violence in Ireland back then, but there were many gaps in my knowledge.
Generally, I liked Say Nothing – it’s probably closer to 3.5 stars for me, as it did a great job at laying out what had happened during the Troubles. My big takeaway was learning about famous IRA figures such as the Price sisters, Gerry Adams, and Brendan Hughes, and how their stories intertwined and shaped Irish history and independence.
Keefe also spent a lot of time on the aftermath of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, as the last third of the book focused on the Belfast Project at Boston College. This was interesting, but I would have liked to see more on the background of the conflict between Ireland and the UK (but to be fair, that’s through no fault of the author, as he clearly states the scope of his book).
Overall, I’ve been trying to increase my nonfiction reading, but my problem with nonfiction is that at times, it can feel like a bore to get through. That being said, I ultimately always come out glad I read it. Maybe I’ll get to some more nonfiction on my TBR list soon. If the Troubles, or Irish history/politics (or even journalism) interests you at all, this is a great book to pick up.
“History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave… But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme”-Seamus Heaney, The Cure of Troy
2024 reads, 17/22
“Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,-- the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking'd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,-- the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax'd and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy December, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults.”
The textual equivalent of a cinematic long take, the first sentence of Mason & Dixon sets the stage of the story into which you are about to embark. On a cold December evening in 1786, Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke sits down with the children of his family and commences an epic retelling of the lives of astronomer Charles Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon. Already, we’ve got two levels of narrative: Pynchon, the author, is relaying to us the Reverend’s retelling of the history of Mason and Dixon, and on a greater level, the birth of America. It’s a fitting book to finish this past Independence Day weekend.
What is History?
Within the Reverend’s retelling, however, he is noticeably absent from most of the events with Mason and Dixon, only crossing paths with them a few select times when they are not travelling together in America. So, how do we know that the Reverend is relaying an exact story, down to the exact dialogue? How do we know that Pynchon is communicating the Reverend’s exact story? The narrative framing of M&D brings us to the first major theme: what is history, who tells it, and how we can trust what we learn about the truth of America’s past?
“History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,— who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been.”
While M&D is rife with accurate historical fiction, Pynchon also fills this book with anachronistic references to Star Trek, Doctor Who (“the stagecoach is bigger on the inside than the outside!”), and other future events. Maybe it’s all just fun for us readers of the modern era, but on a deeper level, is Pynchon saying that history is continuously doomed to repeat itself?
For now, let’s put aside the fact that history is interpreted and retold, possibly by those with an agenda. What happens in M&D? Why should we believe what the Reverend (or Pynchon) tells us?
Brutality Uncheck’d
In the first section of the book, Latitudes and Departures, Mason and Dixon stop at Cape Town, South Africa on their way to observe the Transit of Venus. Here, they are horrified to see how the Dutch colony treats their slaves, raising the question early on: what happens when colonialists are given unrestricted power, out of sight from the laws that govern them? I’m sure you can tell where I’m going with this, as it’s in the middle section, America, we see this lawlessness continue as Mason and Dixon set sail toward America in 1763.
“The long watchfulness, listening to the Brush. Ev'ry mis'rable last Leaf. The Darkness implacable. When you gentlemen come to stand at the Boundary between the Settl'd and the Unpossess'd, just about to enter the Deep Woods, you will recognize the Sensation”
Upon reflection, I really appreciated this first section: not just for foreshadowing the colonialist regimes in early America, but also getting to know our main characters before traveling west. To be honest, their personalities and dialogue reminded me of Crowley and Aziraphale from Good Omens: Mason, ever so depressive and gothic, recovering from the death of his wife, while Dixon being wide-eyed and optimistic, happy to work with Mason and go on this journey together.
Ghosts of America’s Past
After smoking a joint with Colonel George Washington, and drinking some ale with Ben Franklin, our two protagonists set off westward from Philadelphia (“a Heavenly city and crowded niche of Hell”) to create the boundary that today defines the border between Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.
“They saw Brutality enough, at the Cape of Good Hope. They can no better understand it now, than then. Something is eluding them. Whites in both places are become the very Savages of their own worst Dreams, far out of Measure to any Provocation.”
The colonialist tendencies mentioned above noticeably continue in this section, as they arrive just after the Paxton Massacre. Like the Herero genocide in V. and Gravity’s Rainbow, it makes for uncomfortable reading, even if our main characters aren’t actively involved in these travesties. When Dixon wonders (absentmindedly) to a group of Native Americans if they are in any danger in America, a Mohawk chief responds: “‘Yes of course you are in danger. Your Heart beats? You live here?’ gesturing all ‘round. ‘Danger in every moment.’”
Throughout the novel, there’s also this constant examination of man-made and natural borders, and more importantly, the consequences as to when these artificial boundaries are imposed in our natural world; the biggest example of course is the Mason-Dixon line itself. This border separated the free northern states from the southern slave states, with consequences for years to come. M&D uses this example among others to ask us about the consequences as humans try to fight against the “natural order” of things, and I’m reminded of the concept of “desire paths,” where again, imposed boundaries are no match for human nature — this theme throughout the book was one of my favorites to think about.
“Mason groans. ‘Shall wise Doctors one day write History's assessment of the Good resulting from this Line, vis-à-vis the not-so-good? I wonder which List will be longer.’”
Mystical Beings of Control
Much like history herself, this book is veiled in a fog of uncertainty, the narrative always slightly out of focus. And with this, we get to the theme that pervades throughout all of Pynchon’s work: control. But in an age where the highest form of technology is represented by John Harrison’s marine chronometer and a mechanical digesting duck , the “shadowy technocratic forces” that I’m used to seeing in Pynchon’s other books must resort to a more primitive means of control – and what was more controlling at the time than religion?
“If Chimes could whisper, if Melodies could pass away, and their Souls wander the Earth...if Ghosts danced at Ghost Ridottoes, 'twould require such Musick, Sentiment ever held back, ever at the Edge of breaking forth, in Fragments, as Glass breaks.”
These sinister back-room societies emerge from the shadows just enough to steer our heroes under the guise of “free will,” withholding a kind of necessary gnosis from them. And it’s not just the Catholic church that has the invisible hand: the mystic arts play their own key role, as ley lines pervade their voyage, Jesuits control their messages, and forest creatures such as golems and fairies all surround our two characters. As they explore caverns, temples, and mountains, I could imagine a soundtrack of Gregorian chants in the background – or even Enya.
Religious allusions pervade their entire quest throughout America, as their journey is compared to the Stations of the Cross – some scholars even suggest that their daily morning cup of coffee is one of the blessed sacraments. These allusions had me doing a deep dive into religious mysticism, the occult, and other fantastical beings. Some are harmless, such as the TARDIS-like stagecoach or ghastly visits from Mason’s deceased wife. But remember when we put aside the fact that history is told to us through someone else’s rose-colored lens? M&D leads me to believe that these theocratic forces were the ones ultimately controlling not just Mason and Dixon, but steering America down the wrong path from the very beginning.
“Hell, beneath our feet, bounded,— Heaven, above our pates, unbounded. Hell a collapsing Sphere, Heaven an expanding one. The enclosure of Punishment, the release of Salvation. Sin leading us as naturally to Hell and Compression, as doth Grace to Heaven, and Rarefaction.”
Where is She Now?
The dynamic duo returns to England in the third section of the book, Last Transit. This section is more of an epilogue, filled with hypnagogic expository and much less “action” overall, which I think works really well after reading 700 pages of misadventures. It’s in this section that the true friendship of Mason and Dixon blooms, something that you realize was growing the whole time – I can see why people say that Pynchon’s later works showed a lot of character development, as this last section was heartening and bittersweet at the same time.
If you are interested in reading this one, know that M&D is written in 18th century style English (as you've probably surmised from the quotes above), even though it was published in 1997. This took some adjusting when I started reading, but it really helps with immersion, making you feel like you’re reading an actual primary source re: the travels of the Reverend, Mason, and Dixon. And even though M&D is set in the 1700s, it is still incredibly relevant centuries later. Are there still invisible hands at play, pulling our strings under the guise of free will? Are there still colonialist tendencies, patriarchal hierarchies, and systemic racism? I'll let you answer that yourself.
“Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?— in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,— serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,— Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ's Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe till the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur'd and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,— winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.”
#readingyear2024 #american #history #postmodern #physicallyowned #pynchon
2024 reads, 14/22
On Haiku is a collection of previously written essays by Hiroaki Sato on the art and history of haiku. Although not straightforward nonfiction, the organization of these essays brings about a naturally flowing and cohesive text on one of the most famous and down-to-earth poetic forms.
“In simplest terms, haikai [the predecessor of haiku] meant rejection of poetic diction and adoption of language in daily use. Orthodox court poetry did not tolerate references to quotidian, down-to-earth things like shiru, "soup," and namasu, "fish salad," so incorporating daily elements was haikai.”
This is probably more of an “intermediate” text on Haiku… if such a thing even exists. There is really no introductory chapter or definitions to ground you as you read, and it feels like Sato assumes you are somewhat familiar with haiku masters, e.g., Bashō, Issa, and Shiki. Furthermore, he drops a lot of Eastern history and philosophy which can be daunting (especially as someone with a limited education on this topic). But nowhere does Sato come off as a know-it-all, in fact his tone is very conversational and light – albeit opinionated – as he shares his knowledge.
Sato not only analyzes haiku, renga, and haibun (among other Japanese literary forms), but discusses the historical and societal context in which they were written. This connection of haiku to other facets of Japanese culture enhances haiku analysis, such as in the essay Issa and Hokusai. Here, Sato compares haiku poet Issa to ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, creator of the collection Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (which contains the famous painting The Great Wave off Kanagawa). Both had a similar upbringing, and used that to exaggerate different perspectives in their work.
“O snail Climb Mount Fuji But slowly, slowly!”- Issa While translated haiku are beautiful on their own, understanding the context of their translation generates a new appreciation, and I’m glad Sato spent time on it. I learned that many hiragana and kanji characters in Japanese are used for their double meaning, or almost pun-like function, in haiku – but someone who is unfamiliar with the language and culture (me) would not understand the poet’s intention behind the words. It’s not unlike having a joke explained to you, but in this case, none of the magic is lost. One of my favorite essays, Hearn, Bickerton, Hubbell: Translation and Definition, deals with this topic. Sato starts with five different translators’ versions of Bashō's famous frog-pond haiku:
“Old pond — frogs jumped in — sound of water”
“A lonely pond in age - old stillness sleeps . . . Apart, unstirred by sound or motion . . . till Suddenly into it a lithe frog leaps.”
“Into the calm old pond A frog plunged — then the splash.”
“Breaking the silence Of an ancient pond, A frog jumped into water — A deep resonance.”
“An old pond A frog jumping Sound of water”
How do five different translations come from the same written Japanese language? It’s really interesting stuff, and goes to show how translation between languages is itself an art.
Not only is this a collection of essays worth coming back to, but On Haiku is also a great reference book – not only are there a glossary of terms and a list of important people at the end, but each essay contains a wealth of information for further reading. Definitely worth reading if you are interested at all in haiku, or Japanese literature/history.
2024 reads, 7/22
“The philosopher’s task is neither to reduce the mysterious to a neat set of concepts nor to gaze at it in awed silence. It is to follow the first phenomenological imperative: to go to the things themselves in order to describe them, attempting ‘rigorously to put into words what is not ordinarily put into words, what is sometimes considered inexpressible’.”
In At the Existentialist Café, Bakewell presents a very digestible recount of the events surrounding Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and the lives of other philosophers in the twentieth century. The first few chapters are dedicated to Husserl and Heidegger, the phenomenologists who paved the way for the existentialists. The chapters then follow a pseudo-chronological order, exploring other philosophers such as Camus, Merleau-Ponty, and Arendt, although mostly in the context of Sartre and Beauvoir’s lives.
I read this book mostly to get the historical context surrounding Camus and Sartre, after reading some of their works. I still want to read a biography solely focused on Camus, but this book was great at providing a much larger picture of philosophy at the time, and how it still influences humanity into the twenty-first century. While a bit dry at times, especially in some of the early chapters, Bakewell expertly breaks down the dense writings of each philosopher so that us non-philosophers can understand.
“Sartre argues that freedom terrifies us, yet we cannot escape it, because we are it.”
If you are interested in this book, I would recommend first reading The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus, and Nausea by Sartre – these books are “spoiled” (depending how you define the word) and analyzed by Bakewell, and her discussion felt more “complete” having already read some of these works.
“The way to live is to throw ourselves, not into faith, but into our own lives, conducting them in affirmation of every moment, exactly as it is, without wishing that anything was different, and without harbouring peevish resentment against others or against our fate.”
2024 reads, 6/22
Some pre-reading before I attempt my next big novel, Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon.
Before the era of satellites and GPS, determining longitude at sea was quite a challenge, so much so that £20,000 (almost half a million in US dollars today) was to be awarded to the person that could come up with a reliable method for doing so. Longitude details the many attempts and final success of this quest.
Except for the meaty parts, this wasn’t the most interesting book, and I felt it could have been cut down a bit (although less than 200 pages is already pretty short). Regardless, it was a quick enough read and gave some great background on both astronomy and navigation in the eighteenth century.
“The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time.”
If you’re interested, this 10-minute YouTube video summarizes the entire story pretty well.
2024 reads, 3/22
(shout out to my friend Meesun for gifting me this book!)
Last year I attempted to read Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall, but ended up DNFing it, because it was a cursory look at decades and decades of geopolitics through a pro-U.S. militaristic lens. Seriously, the author had something negative to say about every country – except the United States 😬. But I only bring this up because after reading The Island of Sea Women, I realized that this (well-researched!) historical fiction had much more of an impact on my understanding of history than Prisoners of Geography ever could.
The Island of Sea Women follows childhood friends Young-sook and Mi-ja as they join their Jeju Island village’s diving collective as haenyeo (female divers). Early on, we are also introduced to the concept of sumbisori, the physical sound a haenyeo makes after resurfacing from a long dive. I loved this, and I believed it was a metaphor for the entire novel.
“The sumbisori is the special sound—like a whistle or a dolphin’s call—a haenyeo makes as she breaches the surface of the sea and releases the air she’s held in her lungs, followed by a deep intake of breath.”
We observe Young-sook, Mi-ja, and the village throughout the twentieth-century historical events that occur on Jeju (and Korea as a whole). Over a span of seventy years, we learn about the Japanese occupation of Korea, the People's Committees of post-WWII Korea, the Korean war, Jeju 4.3, the Bukchon massacre (this chapter was really hard to read), and Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement), just to name a few. We experience these events through Young-sook, so reading the last chapter feels like the sumbisori of the book itself: Young-sook’s deeply personal reaction to the trauma and hardships she experienced.
This book is an important one, and I believe that it covers many things that should be taught in history classes. Seeing these events through the eyes of Young-sook helps someone like me better understand the world – which is what Prisoners of Geography failed to do.
“‘Together our sumbisori create a song of the air and wind on Jeju. Our sumbisori is the innermost sound of the world. It connects us to the future and the past. Our sumbisori allows us first to serve our parents and then our children.’”
“Rachel was looking into the mirror at an angle of 45 degrees, and so had a view of the face turned toward the room and the face on the other side, reflected in the mirror; here were time and reverse-time, co-existing, cancelling one another exactly out. Were there many such reference points, scattered through the world, perhaps only at nodes like this room which housed a transient population of the imperfect, the dissatisfied; did real time plus virtual or mirror-time equal zero and thus serve some half-understood moral purpose?”
V. is Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, a postmodern maze of settings and plot lines, written almost unbelievably at twenty-six years old. The usual Pynchonian themes are here: paranoia, control, and conspiracy. However, this felt like his most disjointed book out of all the ones I’ve read so far (those being The Crying of Lot 49, Inherent Vice, and Gravity’s Rainbow). It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but there are entire chapters that introduce new characters never to be seen again – one can almost read this as a collection of loosely connected short stories.
We begin on Christmas Eve, 1955, where the first of two main protagonists, discharged U.S. Navy sailor Benny Profane, wanders into a local bar. In the next chapter, British Foreign Officer Herbert Stencil is introduced, as well as his quest for a woman referred to as ‘V.’ in his father’s notebooks. Other characters include (but are not limited to) Profane’s love interest Rachel, her roommate Esther, the NYC artist Slab, and psychologist/dentist Dr. Dudley Eigenvalue. From here, the novel takes us to New York City, Egypt, Italy, Southwest Africa, Malta, and Paris, all at different times in history, loosely connected by the mysterious V.
“Though offering no clue to their enigma; for they reflected a free-floating sadness, unfocused, indeterminate: a woman, the casual tourist might think at first, be almost convinced until some more catholic light moving in and out of a web of capillaries would make him not so sure. What then? Politics, perhaps.”
Unlike Gravity’s Rainbow, which takes place during WWII, this novel deals with the aftermath of said war. But it’s not spoken about directly, save for a comment here or there; it’s shown to us by what happens as Profane, Stencil, and others yo-yo around their lives, looking for meaning, constantly resisting becoming ‘inanimate’ or ‘non-human’ – driven lifeless by the horrors of war. This motif was probably my favorite throughout the book, best personified by the crash-test dummy SHOCK.
“SHOCK was thus entirely lifelike in every way. It scared the hell out of Profane the first time he saw it, lying half out the smashed windshield of an old Plymouth, fitted with moulages for depressed-skull and jaw injuries and compound arm and leg fractures. But now he'd got used to it.”
The slow acceptance, or “getting used to,” of becoming inanimate is what some of these characters attempt (and fail) to resist. Slab’s painting Cheese Danish No. 35, for example, presents a bird constantly eating from the tree in which it resides, never needing to move, as the tree keeps growing, eventually impaling the bird on a gargoyle’s tooth at the top of the painting.
“‘Why can't he fly away?’ Esther said. ‘He is too stupid. He used to know how to fly once, but he's forgotten.’ ‘I detect allegory in all this,’ she said. ‘No,’ said Slab.”
Pynchon also proposes that the WWII ‘Kilroy is here’ drawing originated as band-pass filter schematic, further solidifying that in war we are ever so close to being mechanical and inhuman. Fortunately, the antidote to this “non-humanity” is alluded to – individuality. In “Chapter 11: Confessions of Fautso Maijstral”, we follow multiple versions of Fausto before, during, and after the WWII siege of Malta, each version exhibiting differing levels of humanity. Tragic events bring him to an almost inanimate existence, but the slow process of living and consistently being himself brings him back.
"Mathematically, boy," [Eigenvalue] told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
But V. is also upfront about the discomforts of war, particularly “Chapter 9: Mondaugen’s story.” Just like in Gravity’s Rainbow, the genocide of the Herero population plays an important part to the story, but in V., there is a more graphic depiction from the point of view of the Germans. It’s rough. Not just because this is something that is lost to history (the first I’ve heard of this genocide was during my GR read), but it’s from the point of view of the white Kurt Mondaugen. However, because it’s from his point of view, it allows these horrors to be portrayed ethically; if Pynchon decided to write this story from the Herero point of view, that would be silencing and appropriating their voice. I can’t explain it any more eloquently than this quote from Ariel Saramandi, Editor-in-Chief of Transect Magazine, from her excellent article Thomas Pynchon Shows Us How White Writers Can Avoid Appropriation:
“…you see the genocide unfold through Mondaugen’s eyes, the reader feels like a witness, hands tied and somehow complicit in the mechanisms of white history. Indifference is impossible. The colonists’ actions are told in the same, detached voice as the German reports, a voice that showcases the utter, systemic dehumanization of the Hereros…”
V. is tough, and it wouldn’t be my suggested starting point for reading Pynchon. The connections are harder to find, but following a Reddit reading group, with summaries and analyses after each chapter, was actually pretty fun – I love hearing what others take away from their reading. The historical events being used as a backdrop for the overall themes kept me engaged throughout, as well as rooting for Profane and Stencil to (hopefully) find what they’re looking for.
“Hitler, Eichmann, Mengele. Fifteen years ago. Has it occurred to you there may be no more standards for crazy or sane, now that it's started?”
“The rearrangement of rhythm in Krautrock, its novel textures and colouring, the relationship between instruments, song structures and spontaneous improvisation, are all metaphors for a necessary postwar reconstruction, the re-establishment of cultural identity.”
It’s hard to define Krautrock sonically, but you know it when you hear it. It was through the band Kraftwerk, one of the defining electronic bands of the seventies, that I started branching out into other bands of that time and place – this book then gave me a bigger picture of what the genre actually is.
Krautrock (originally a derogatory term from the British music press, using the German insult “Kraut”) styles can range from electronic, punk, ambient, psychedelic; some bands even embrace avant-garde and noise. But more than the music, these bands were making something authentically German, shying away from the influence of the British Invasion, rock ‘n’ roll or American blues.
“Springsteen, as ever, is preoccupied with keeping it ‘real’, yet his febrile lyrical visions are sheer rock ’n’ roll mythological hokum. Kraftwerk may look and sound ‘inauthentic’ but at least ‘Autobahn’ [the album] bears a closer resemblance to life as it is lived.”
I don’t think that Springsteen is inauthentic, but the above quote exhibits the difference in what these bands were striving for at the time (you can also see from the quote how Stubbs wears his opinions on his sleeve throughout the book). Krautrock’s authenticity can range from a beautiful psychedelic instrumental, a twenty-minute long ambient soundscape, or an extended improvisation over a simple motorik beat. Stubbs even describes one song as, ‘a high-pitched electronic peal around which the Moog [synthesizer] coils its oblique variations. For the less tolerant it will resemble an uninvestigated car alarm;’ – but don’t let this deter you from checking out some of these bands.
This book gives a great introduction to the history, stories, and relationships of the bands that formed the Krautrock genre. At times the text can be a bit bloated, especially with his strong bias, but Stubbs concludes the book well, chronicling bands that have gone on record describing their influence from Krautrock, including David Bowie, Joy Division, My Bloody Valentine, Portishead, Sonic Youth, Simple Minds, Soft Cell, Talking Heads, among many others. You may not have heard of Kraftwerk, but you have heard their influences in modern electronic/dance music (or even directly through sampling across all different musicians, e.g., Coldplay, New Order, Afrika Bambaataa, Dr. Dre, LCD Soundsystem, etc.). Anyone interested in music history, especially that of the 70s and 80s, would learn a lot from this book.
Addendum: This past summer I took a trip to Berlin for a conference and had some time to do some exploring. Maybe it was the fact that I had time to do a good amount of sightseeing, but I feel that the below quote perfectly captures what I liked about the city:
“No great city, not London, not New York, not Paris, not even Moscow, wears the scars of twentieth-century trauma the way Berlin does. Many of its streets and tenements are still riddled and strafed with bullet holes, a legacy of the Soviet advance on the city. Even today, with the remnants of Checkpoint Charlie cleared to make way for a vast business centre, the city is dotted with reminders and memorials of the Second World War, from the bleakly understated ‘Topography of Terror’, former site of the SS and the Gestapo in Niederkirchnerstrasse, to Peter Eisenman and Buro Happold’s Holocaust Memorial near to the Brandenburg Gate, whose sloping, undulating series of concrete slabs seeks to speak volumes about the unspeakable, in abstract form. Berlin is not exactly a ‘pretty’ city, in the cosy, old town, nostalgic sense. It is harsh, brusque in its modernity and its juxtapositions, though in unexpected spaces it throws up glimpses of the surreal.”