Grab Bag

By Robbie on February 2, 2009

First, let me express my sadness at the death of America's great verbal visionary, John Updike.  Some of his writing (Rabbit, Run; Roger's Version; the Maples stories) opened crucial dimensions of worldly experience to me when I first came across it in the 1980s.  His unsparing anthropological gaze fell on on every brand of human behavioral tendency and warp: sexual, familial, mystical, political, lunatic. His characters grasped clumsily after pleasure and meaning; they were the opposite of tokens in cleverly plotted diversions, moving through their environment with as much determination and perplexment and dumb wonder as you and I do.  Inhuman nature, dazzling, brutal, and indifferent to our torments and desires, also fired his mind and pen.  Thus did his writing demonstrate, I believe, a certain courage, and a ferocious engagement with his time and place (just as his dedication to his three-page-a-day output manifested level-headed steadfastness).  In his exacting sentence work there is the faith that all that we want or need to express is there in the language, somewhere.  A false faith, no doubt, yet it comforts and inspires as much as the next faith, and more importantly, does not negate the portion of truth that is in these books, which is ample.  There are questions about his lavish style, his suspiciously ceaseless production, his celebrity, his attitude to women, and the quality of the fiction of his last fifteen or so years, but looking at the now-complete shelf of his literary achievement, it seems to me the most conservative assessment to say that this was one writer who carried out his contract with his readers and his craft spectacularly.

On to the lesser, usual topic of self-promotion.  I was happy to report a little while ago that WXRT 93.1, the Chicago radio station, is going to play my latest release, "50-vc. Doberman," one song at a time for fifty weeks.  This will begin Tuesday night, February 3.  The songs will come at the end of the program called "The Eclectic Company" -- I will know better what time after the first one airs and will get back.  I was frankly thrilled when I found that WXRT would air these songs.  It brings my little project, which is possibly stigmatized by its digital-only format and the concentration on website sales, substantially more prestige and publicity.  For years now, WXRT has been the only commercial music station in Chicago with a local flavor, a strong community presence, and a modicum of playlist independence.  The number of such stations in major cities across the country has dwindled and is probably now countable on your hands.  Further, "The Eclectic Company," hosted by my friends Jon Langford and Nick Tremulis, is the very model of undaunted, personality-based music programming and a beautiful throwback to the easy-as-a-breeze FM of the 1970s.  I've done the show a couple times, and they are happy to play any music I bring in, no matter how offensive to modern attention spans and the presumed sensibility of the station's demographic -- that's something most public stations wouldn't do, for God's sake, not for an entire hour anyway.  So three cheers for this broadcaster, and I hope you will consider making Tuesday night a weekly destination for a while.  (To be precise, 49 weeks not 50, since one of the songs is just a tad too explicit to scrub clean without losing the point.)

Twelve of the 50, by the way, are now available on itunes and Amazon and elsewhere (did I mention that before?), and the whole bunch will be up for sale here for a measly $35 within the next couple weeks.  I was hoping to have the music up the same week the WXRT broadcasts began, but some distracting business came up at home.  Not much longer though!

A correspondent, Don, tells me that a New York Times columnist, Frank Rich, wrote a piece about our outgoing president called "Forgotten But Not Gone."  Don wonders whether a sly homage is intended.  In a somewhat less charitable way, I wonder the same about the Goodman Theater's production of "Desire Under the Elms," which, according to reports, has a scene with bacon being fried.  Now, in what dank basement have I smelled that before?  And where may I smell it yet again?