“Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock”, by Steven Hyden

 

320 pages, Dey Street Books, ISBN-13: 978-0062657138

In Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock, Steven Hyden explores “the end of classic rock” which he defines as beginning with the release of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and ending with Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile. Throughout he discusses the importance of the live show to classic rock and “life on the road” while exploring artists and bands he adores and throwing shade at those he doesn’t. All of which is expected and quite well done (I particularly liked when he wrote about the “Midwestern” music his Mom loved and “Dad Rock”; both rather patronizingly but also respectful, if you can imagine). Still, I never felt it added up to more than just a fun approach to music criticism, which is all well and good but rather, I dunno, lacking.

I found that reading Twilight of the Gods was rather like having a very long conversation with a friend with similar cultural touchstones who is super into Classic Rock: when the conversation was about those bands I love (or have heard of, at least), I enjoyed the book more, was more engaged in the conversation. However, when the talk turned to artists I was less familiar with (or never heard of, like Phish) it was like having a dude drone on in my ear about a killer track that changed his life; that’s all well and good, mate, but could we steer the conversation back to how Moving Pictures by Rush is the greatest progressive rock album EVER? Anyway, as much as I might not want to hear about these other bands, by and large I enjoyed the conversation with a man who has obviously devoted his life to the music that affected and moved him like no other.

Of course, knowing the political leanings of most classic rock artists – “Imagine no possessions/I wonder if you can”; no, I wonder if YOU can, you bleeding-heart millionaire – you just KNOW a rock journalist from Minnesota might also identify with those leanings. And of course he does, but not to the point of preaching. Usually. What I initially appreciated about Hyden was his very likeable, regular guy demeanor, one who loves beer almost as much as classic rock music and the musicians that made it. I appreciated his sparing us politics and just delivering a great read – until he didn’t. Don’t like disco? Well, then, Sir, you are a racist sexist bigoted homophobe who kills puppies. Plus: Trump = BAD. The obligatory snarkiness toward Trump, his voters and Republicans in general was tedious and unimaginative, and spoilt some parts of the book for me.

Hyden also makes sure to lament his white privilege, along with the lack of diversity in classic rock. But is it possible that undefined cultural norms drive more whites to rock and more blacks to rap (or before that blues, funk or Motown)? The art world seems best served through evolution rather than forced moral calls for diversity. He then doubles down to posit that the lack of diversity in rock actually makes it reactionary. As if Neil Young, John Lennon, Joni Mitchell et al pounded the pavement for Richard Nixon back in the day. Aside from Ted Nugent and maybe Alice Cooper, can anyone name a rocker who is not thoroughly Progressive? Indeed, it is the seeming uniformity of (leftist) opinion in music that makes so much of it seem fake and tired, as if everyone in school is just aping what the popular kids are saying so they can fit in.

Alright, alright, alright, enough negativity. Hyden’s central thesis is that music of any stripe is mostly a proxy for the listener’s own life: “When a rock star dies, what people are mourning is their own mortality”, he writes, and it’s a damn good point. With the passing of a Rock God, a little bit of the world dies – a world inside of us, for the music these people made is the soundtrack to our very lives. You can say the same of any other genre, too – whether it’s a pop star, a movie star, a popular author, or what have you – for these larger-than-life personalities affect people far outside their families or personal circles. Like so many things, music is about subjective taste, OUR taste, which is why MY music is so much better than YOURS. A never-ending argument, until the subject of that argument kicks off.

“MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson”, by Steve Knopper

 

Scribner, 448 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1476730387

I owe Michael Jackson an apology. I thought that he was guilty of molesting all of those boys way back when but, after having read Steve Knopper’s MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson, I have flip-flopped and decided that those boys (or, more likely, the parents of those boys) saw an opportunity to make a shit-ton of money off of a flawed and vulnerable boy-man and ran with it. This is not to say that Jackson was blameless in his own persecution – inviting a score of underage boys over for “sleepovers” is not a regular activity for a well-adjusted and normal man – but he was not the twisted pedophile that opposition lawyers and the hostile press made him out to be. So, then…ahem…Sorry, Mike.

Despite Jackson’s tremendous worldwide success, his final years were painful and, ultimately it seems, lonely. As Knopper reveals, the singer never fully recovered from a 1984 accident that burned his scalp while he was filming a Pepsi commercial, and the constant skin bleaching and reconstructive surgeries turned his charismatic physical features ghostly. While much of Jackson’s life will always be a mystery – Just how could his voice sound almost adult just before puberty? What drove his self-destructive compulsions? What was it with all of those boys anyway? – Knopper’s book, perhaps, comes as close to some possible answers as we are likely to get, short of an undiscovered autobiography from the man.

Beginning in Jackson’s hometown of Gary, Indiana, in the tiny house he shared with his parents and eight siblings, Knopper adds a broader view of this distressed city. Gambling, prostitution and political opportunism coexisted along with the numerous blues clubs and lounges where a determined Joe Jackson brought his young sons to sing. Bigger stages and initial recording dates in Chicago followed, and while it’s widely known that Joe Jackson’s resolve degenerated into abuse, Knopper emphasizes a few images that say more than overloaded details (whenever the boys became “too wiggly”, the producers would point to a sign in the studio that read “Call Papa Joe”; they never even had to pick up the phone).

MJ stands above a crowded field. In 2010, a year after Jackson’s death, the “Journal of Pan African Studies” published a list of academic articles about him; musicologists, sociologists and law professors all drew on his life and work for their own discourses. But Knopper, who also writes for the Chicago Tribune, distills hundreds of original interviews to illuminate Jackson’s complexities. He also offers new understandings of his diligent creative process. Digging into Jackson’s hugely influential records, kinetic stage persona and occasionally brilliant investments, Knopper ties all of these elements together for this lively and definitive biography of a cultural phenomenon who was, at heart, nothing more than a lonely little boy.

“Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale”, by Gillian Gill

 

Random House, 592 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0345451880

For a time, Florence Nightingale was the most famous woman in the world. While nowadays we know her as some kind of secular saint and the inexhaustible advocate for solder’s well-being, the reality is (naturally) quite more complicated, as we learn in Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale by Gillian Gill. In an utterly beguiling narrative that reads like the best Victorian fiction, Gill tells the story of this richly complex woman and her adoring, wealthy and cultivated father, a mother whose conventional façade concealed a surprisingly unfettered intelligence and a sister whose life took such a different course one can only wonder that two so different women were really sisters.

By kinship or friendship, Florence found herself connected to the cream of Victorian England’s intellectual aristocracy, and though the Nightingales moved in a world of ease and privilege, they themselves came from solidly middle-class stock with deep traditions of hard work, natural curiosity and moral clarity – so it should have come as no surprise to William Edward and Fanny Nightingale when Florence showed an early passion for helping others (combined with a precocious bent for power). From childhood on, Florence showed a penchant for getting her way by hook or by crook, and we read as one person after another find themselves quite unable to stop her from getting what she wanted, a talent that would come in handy in adult life.

Nobody in the Nightingale family had ever considered nursing as a viable profession, but upon turning seventeen – when young ladies of her social class and standing were expected to be seeking a husband – Florence believed that God himself had revealed her life’s vocation. By the time she turned twenty-eight she had already rejected two eligible suitors and lost none of her resolve; leading hospitals, rather than nursing, was her true aim, and she never lost sight of that goal. With the outbreak of the Crimean War, her opportunity to do just that landed in her lap and, using those aforementioned connections and contacts, saw her desires transformed into reality at last and seized her place in history.

Gill manages to study Florence’s life in full, as well as her family and ancestors who influenced her and shaped her to become the woman she was. It is the tale of the development of nursing and medical care (and the lack thereof at the time; nursing was an amateur hobby at best when Nightingale came upon the scene). She experienced first-hand the poor condition of the soldiers in the field and saw the difference that could be made through sanitation and cleanliness. She had many pitfalls and obstacles to overcome but, through diplomacy and hands-on example, she indeed overcame them. And all during the Victorian Era, when a woman’s place in the world was seen as best served as wife and mother and little else.

Cold, passionate and unswervingly committed to her vocation, Florence Nightingale was one of the most significant reformers in the history of medicine. Gill does honor to her subject while providing a vivid and compellingly readable account of the family whose loyal support was crucial to her achievement. While it’s hard to like Florence Nightingale, it’s impossible not to admire her.

“The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 2: Grim Lands”, by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Jim & Ruth Keegan

510 pages, Del Rey, ISBN-13: 978-0345490193

In the early oughts, Del Rey began producing the complete works of Robert E. Howard; The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 2: Grim Lands, illustrated by Jim & Ruth Keegan, was the eighth volume to be published. Once you crack the spine on this particular edition, you will stories such as: Black Vulmea’s Vengeance, The Bull Dog Breed, By This Axe I Rule!, Gents on the Lynch, Lord of Samarcand, The Man on the Ground, The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune, Old Garfield’s Heart, Pigeons From Hell, Red Nails, The Shadow of the Vulture, Son of the White Wolf, The Tower of the Elephant, Vultures of Wahpeton, Wild Water and Wings in the Night, along with the poems A Song of the Naked Lands, Black Harps in the Hills, Cimmeria, Echoes From an Anvil, Flint’s Passing, The Grim Land, The King and the Oak, Musings, Never Beyond the Beast, Solomon Kane’s Homecoming, Timur-lang and Which Will Scarcely Be Understood.

This book, along with the first volume (The Best of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1: Crimson Shadows, reviewed on April 22^nd, 2023) provides an excellent look into the lesser-known works of a truly American author. This edition to the Del Rey collection of Howard’s work covers his stories from Conan, to his westerns, to horror and many other genres, to boot (while I understand the publisher’s decision to start with Howard’s better-known works, one would almost be better off starting with this volume and Crimson Shadows, seeing as they cover his many literary oeuvres). I only started reading REH when these Del Rey collections began coming out in 2003; before then, I had only been familiar with the Conan the Barbarian movie starring the Austrian behemoth – oh, and as it turns out, with Kull the Conqueror, from the comics that were published by Marvel in the 70s, although I don’t think I knew then that the creator of Conan and Kull were one and the same.

However – there’s often an however, isn’t there? – all is not well. I have to say that it is Howard’s Sword’n’Sorcery works that really do it for me, while his other tales – the Westerns, the Crime Stories, the Violence for the sake of Violence Stories – are okay; oh, I don’t hate them or think they are subpar, they just don’t grab me the way in which Conan or Kull or even Solomon Kane does…er, you know what I mean. Perv. Maybe that’s why I feel like the tales offered here feel rather like warmed-over leftovers, never mind all of the praise that artists Jim & Ruth Keegan lavish on these tales (or their humble-bragging over how difficult it sometimes was to bring these tales to life). Perhaps the fact that some Conan et al. tales were added to this volume, rather than to the books dedicated to their characters, says something – like, that Del Rey and the Keegans knew they had to bulk up this volume of B-Listers with a star attraction or two.

Ah, bugger all. If you’ve made it this far in the Del Rey Howardpalooza then maybe you’ll just gloss over these needling details. I mean, they can’t all be pearls, right? Right? I for one am constitutionally incapable of leaving a collection unfulfilled, so even if this edition of Howard’s work was full of his juvenilia, or pencil doodles, or speeches endorsing FDR or something (perish the thought) I would have still bought it, and maybe even have enjoyed it. Who knows, maybe you’ll think these tales are as good as REH’s other works, that maybe he missed his calling as a western writer, or that maybe he should have stuck to the boxing tales. Whatever. While I can’t say that all of the stories in Grim Lands are good, I’d still prefer them to so much of the crap being churned out by publishers today with their woke nonsense and whatnot. Just think: Howard’s worse is better than most modern writer’s best. Scary stuff.

“I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick”, by Emmanuel Carrère, translated by Timothy Bent

 

336 pages, Metropolitan Books, ISBN-13: 978-0805054644

You may think you have never heard of Philip Kindred Dick, but check out this list of modern-day adaptations of his (many, many) works:

• The 1982 film (and its 2017 sequel) “Blade Runner” based on the 1968 short novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• The 1990 film (and the 2012 remake, if you must) “Total Recall” based on the 1966 short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
• The 1995 film “Screamers” based on the 1953 short story Second Variety
• The 2002 film “Imposter” based on the 1953 short story of the same name
• The 2002 film “Minority Report” based on the 1953 short story The Minority Report
• The 2003 film “Paycheck” based on the 1953 short story of the same name
• The 2006 film “A Scanner Darkly” based on the 1977 novel of the same name
• The 2007 film “Next” based on the 1954 short story The Golden Man
• The 2011 film “The Adjustment Bureau” based on the 1954 short story Adjustment Team
• The 2013 film “The Crystal Crypt” based on the 1954 short story of the same name
• The 2015-2019 mini-series “The Man in the High Castle” based on the 1962 novel of the same name
• To say nothing of the many tales adapted for the 2017 anthology series “Electric Dreams”

That’s a lot of writing to fit into a mere 53 years, but Philip K. Dick was nothing if not prolific – and weird, as is made clear in I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick by Emmanuel Carrère and translated by Timothy Bent (a French dude writing a biography of an American SciFi writer? Will wonders never cease?). Carrère’s biography is standard in that it follows its subject chronologically – Dick is born, Dick lives, Dicks writes, Dick loses his ever-lovin’ mind, Dick dies – and so the facts of Dick’s life are easy to grasp…NOT so easy to grasp are the many machinations that sprung forth from Dick’s brilliant but disturbed brain.

Carrère’s writing (and Bent’s translating) are excellent and his – their? – biography works on several levels: he brings the eras Dick lived and worked in – the 1950s, 60s and 70s – to light and invokes their differing atmospheres and how his writing and ideas differed one from the other; he also brings forth his subject’s personality as he aged (I won’t say matured), from his adolescent nerdom to his more-or-less-straight 20s onward into his drug-induced 30s and 40s. Throughout it all Carrère never loses focus on his subject’s writings, especially how changes in his life became reflected in his work which become some of the author’s most insightful undertakings.

Carrère’s biography proves its worth in that after one has closed the covers at last they have a better feel of just who this man was and what made him tick; better, it makes one want to read the source material for so many modern Hollywood adaptations. If you are unfamiliar with just who the hell Philip K. Dick was – or if you think you are familiar – then I Am Alive and You Are Dead will open your eyes to this one-man creative force. And even if you don’t think that he is an American Dostoyevsky like Carrère does, you cannot help but marvel at the prophetic visions this mere Science Fiction writer wrought all those decades ago.

“Who Dares Wins: Britain 1979-1982”, by Dominic Sandbrook

 

976 pages, Allen Lane, ISBN-13: 978-1846147371

With Who Dares Wins: Britain 1979-1982, Dominic Sandbrook continues his vast history of Great Britain from the late 1950s up to the present day – eventually. This is the fifth immense volume (weighing in at almost a thousand pages) and extends from Margaret Thatcher’s general election victory in May 1979 until the victorious conclusion of the Falklands War in 1982. Sandbrook snagged “Who Dares Wins” from the Special Air Service (SAS), a special forces unit of the British Army, using it to highlight what he sees as what differentiated the 1980s from the 1970s: “the rebirth of a patriotic populism” (something very similar occurred in the United States under President Reagan; no wonder Reagan and Thatcher got along like a house on fire).

While the beginning of Thatcher’s premiership may have looked like a continuation of the Bad Old Days of the 1970s – what with all of those industrial powerhouses folding and union thugs striking and football hooligans rioting and Irish terrorists exploding – it was the Iron Lady who took the reins and turned things around. Don’t believe me? Just ask Jim Callaghan, her immediate Labour predecessor at 10 Downing Street: “There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics…I suspect there is now such a sea-change – and it is for Mrs. Thatcher”. This was said way back when political opponents could still say nice things about Those People on the other side, even if the praise was faint indeed.

As with his other works in this series, Sandbrook is not afraid to delve outside of the typical, respectable sources for his snatches of this near-past. For instance, one source he mines for 1980s comedic gold are “The Henry Root Letters” which were the creation of writer William Donaldson who wrote to numerous public figures with unusual or outlandish questions and requests. Or “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾”, written by Sue Townsend in the form of a diary, focusing on the worries and regrets of a teenager who believes himself to be an intellectual. Reading these two supposedly comedic but surprisingly insightful “fictional” works sometimes puts the mainstream media to shame, what with their joyous insights and pithy language.

Here are the early 1980s in all their gaudy glory: This is the story of Tony Benn, Ian Botham and Princess Diana; Joy Division, Chariots of Fire, the Austin Metro and Juliet Bravo; wine bars, Cruise missiles, the ZX Spectrum and the battle for the Falklands. And towering above them all, the most divisive Prime Minister of modern times (not an insult) – the Iron Lady. Vivid, surprising and gloriously entertaining, Dominic Sandbrook recreates the decisive turning point in Britain’s recent history. For some people this was an age of unparalleled opportunity, the heyday of computers and credit cards, snooker and Spandau Ballet. Yet for others it was an era of shocking bitterness, as industries collapsed, working-class communities buckled and the Labour Party tore itself apart. Poor Bastards.

Who Dares Wins is the fifth volume in Sandbrook’s history and there seems to be no end in sight. Sandbrook is clearly enjoying himself so much he can’t bear the series to end – and, as a reader, so am I. This is vividly panoramic history, ranging from high affairs of state to the tiniest textural details of everyday life: the Falklands factor and the F-plan diet, monetary targets and the mania for home improvement, steel strikes and “Sloane Rangers” (look it up). Sandbrook offers a provocative justification for narrowing the timeframe in his latest volume: 1979 to 1982 may be only three years, but they were “the most exciting and controversial years in our post-war history”.

“The Illustrated Out of Africa”, by Karen Blixen

 

288 pages, Cresset Press, ISBN-13: 978-0712624053

My-oh-my but what a problematic book we have here. Consider: a privileged white woman from Denmark – that’s in Europe, the birthplace of White People and, lemme tell ya somethin’ brother, they don’t get much whiter than Danes – leaves the good ole Danevang for Africa, where she steals up to 6000 acres from the helpless natives…well, I guess technically she bought it, but can whitey really be said to buy anything not in Europe? Hmmmmm? She then rapes the native soil by planting coffee – COFFEE! – and exploits the natives by employing them to harvest this Yemeni bean and compounds her sins by selling the stuff like the exploitative capitalist witch that she is. For shame, madam; for ever-lovin’ shame. Only…well, since Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke was a woman in the 20^th Century she just HAD to be oppressed herself, despite her high falutin’ status, and she provided all sorts of things for the native Kikuyu people who worked her farm, and her husband gave her syphilis, and, hell, Meryl Streep played her in Out of Africa…so she just CAN’T be bad, right? (man, it’s exhausting being woke; I don’t know how the aggrieved do it).

So, anyway, what all this is about is The Illustrated Out of Africa by the aforementioned Baroness Blixen – or Isak Dinesen, if you prefer her pen-name. But this book is not like the other aforementioned Out of Africa movie, as this work is basically a chronological diary of this Baroness-cum-Coffee Farmer and her life in Africa. It is this long-forgotten and long-lost world – good or bad, you decide – that is, perhaps, the central focus of the book, perhaps unwittingly so. For Blixen loved the Africa she lived in and gives a sense that the surrounding natural elements embodied and reflected back her own depths of feelings and her joyous love for them. Throughout her autobiography, Blixen seems to have the uncanny ability to enter other people’s consciousness’ and virtually become that other person, tracing their otherwise inscrutable thoughts and feelings back through their lives as though she had lived those lives herself. Reading Out of Africa is a magical experience as I felt as though I knew the minds of the other white folk she met on her farm in Africa and, surprisingly, of the native people working and living on the farm. Leaving must have been heart-wrenching for her.

The Illustrated Out of Africa reads like a diary – with notations on what happened on this day or what she said to someone on that day – but it is so much more; a reflection of one woman’s love for a home she built far away from her native land and the people she met. So I guess we can forgive Blixen for her whiteness…just this once.