No Pictures: Parker Could've Taken Beckett, Bergman & Cobain, But He Would've Struggled With Hank Shocklee

Nation of Millions
By Christopher Weingarten, 2010

The 33 1/3 series is a lot less impressive when you actually sit down and read a bunch of them, but when it's good, it's an excellent argument for why music criticism is currently outpacing its brothers in film criticism. Part of that might be due to the lack of a universally embraced high art white tower in music writing--this kind of stuff has always been best produced by the outside antagonist, whereas film criticism was built by a club of similarly-toned writers, all of whom initially tried to keep the Farber's and Kael's at arm's length and are currently way too invested in fighting with us no-impact bloggers. Meanwhile, Weingarten's based-in-history, obsessed-with-deconstruction take on a great band's greatest album is the sort of thing that is as unique as the music it's focused on, and a lovely reminder of what people can produce when they stop concerning themselves with bitching about their peer group. Like the other great takes in the series, Nation of Millions is less about getting an audience to agree with it (stop fucking doing that) than it is about using the no-comment nature of print to nail down a deliriously tough manifesto. While some readers will undoubtably fail to separate Weingarten's purposely abrasive public persona with his arguments, their loss is the don't-cares gain. In perfect symmetry, that twist of fate is going to match right up with another audience as well, the one that didn't grasp what they had in their headphones back when Chuck D did this to music the first time; when Hank Shocklee, refused some technical advice and shoot back, "Fuck music!"

In Utero
By Gillian Gaar, 2008

This is basically two things: one, a longform attempt at liner notes for the Nirvana boxset (which the author was a project consultant for) and two, some notes for a far more interesting book on Steve Albini. If there's one thing this world needs to have before it explodes into a caused-by-robots holocaust, it's a two-thousand page book about Albini, who is probably the most interesting musical figure of the last three decades. Even if that isn't true--and hyperbole never is--he's definitely more deserving than 90% of the people that music writers usually focuses on.

Ingmar Bergman: Interviews
Edited by Raphael Shargel, 2007

There's probably some golden nuggets of genius hiding amongst the Conversations With Filmmakers series published by the University Press of Mississippi, so godspeed to the masochist who chooses to read every single one of these things and dig them out. The books are easy enough to find, as they seem to be the number one series every single chain bookstore stocks the film section with. Each one credits a different editor, so it's not a monolithic enterprise, but based off of this one (and a few others I've whiled away some time with), it's a series of consistent disappointment. Some of what's here is of interest, the most notable being the near-my-mortal-end talks where Bergman essentially admits that a big part of his output relied on using everyone around him as emotional slave labor, but most of what you have to read to get to that point is feeble and dull, the product of overly fannish filmmaker types attempting to get the man to nail down a program for them to follow. The starving will find some insights, but nothing that deserves the price they ask for these things, and even less that can't be found perusing the many superior websites devoted to film studies that now populate these god-created tubes.

I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: Samuel Beckett Reader
Edited by Richard Seaver, 1976

Beckett is a lot like Chris Ware, another guy who often gets dismissed because "he isn't funny", even though people who are really into him are always talking about how funny his comics really are. The other criticisms of them don't tread so neatly together--Ware's comics get assailed for being "boring shit" about depressed fat people, while the complaints about Beckett range from the overused "unreadable" over on to the always fun "faggy bullshit". On the praise front, Ware and Beckett are back in lockstep, down a path strewn with extremes. Both have seen (in the deceased Beckett's case, saw) their work referred to as "perfect" while the men themselves were labeled "genius" in many quarters.

The proper thing to do would be to follow up with a "the truth is somewhere in the middle", but I'll be honest: I just don't feel that way about Ware or Beckett. I'm comfortable with outing myself as someone who thinks that these are two people who are straight up better at what they do then those who might be classed as their contemporaries. That doesn't mean that everything they do is amazing; I prefer Ware's work in serialization far more than I do en masse, and I'm universally underwhelmed by Beckett's poetry. But when it comes down to it, there's very few plays as good as Waiting For Godot, very few novels as good as Malone Dies, and there's very comics as good as the Acme Novelty Library. Judge Dredd definitely has the edge on being entertaining, but that's about it.

So what about this book, though? It's a long one, that's for sure, and there's certainly some nice things inside it. The selections made by Seaver--a longtime friend and early supporter of Beckett--are sensible and well-chosen, dealing out a pleasant overview of the man's career. There's the easy stuff--Mercier and Camier, the early poems, Godot and Krapp's Last Tape--and there's a good bit of the tough pieces ('sup, Nohow On?) as well. And yet, the process seems ultimately pointless--Beckett's writing just doesn't lend itself to the Greatest Hits kind of process in the slightest, and the constant string of excerptions almost universally feels more like eviscerations, which can't have been Seaver's plan. It's clear from his introductions (all of which are excellent) that he knows Beckett's work in totality, in multiple languages, and maybe that was the problem. To him, a snapshot is enough to get the memories started, but to the reader, what's left seems unfamiliar and abbreviated. In a darker world, where Beckett's work is out of print and hard to find, the stakes might change. But until that's the case, this is one of those things that no one will ever need.

Deadly Edge
By Donald Westlake, 1971

This is the one where Parker has to deal with home invasion, acid-extreme hippie psychopaths (carved from that great American vein of media panic baddies) and it's the first in a quartet of Parker books that are oft reported to be the darkest ones. It's very, very good. Following a similar pattern to The Seventh, an earlier, underrated Parker book that follows the story of a perfectly pulled-off heist that falls apart when crazed outside forces come after the money, Deadly Edge eventually turns from crime thriller to horror movie in one nasty scene.

"Jessup had gone down on one knee for the gun, but Manny had grabbed up his fork and was poking at the food on Morris' face and then into his own mouth, at Morris' face and into his mouth, fast hard movements, and at the same time laughing and shouting, "Look, I'm eating! Look at this!" I'm eating!" Morris was trying to keep away from the fork, and not fall over the chair lying down behind him, and get the food--it must be stinging him--out of his eyes, and do something about the knife in his side, and stay alive, and none of it was going to happen."

Hell, there's a crucifixion in this one. You know what a crucifixion is? That's where you take a living human being and put nails into their wrists and ankles, and then you leave them somewhere to die. That's one of the things that happens in this book, and the people who do that are the same people Parker ends up going to war with. And even though you already know going into this book's hellish final stretch that our man Parker will survive for more tales of crime 'n woe, that won't do much good at bringing down the tension. This, and it can never be said enough, is how it gets done.

-Tucker Stone, 2010

Comments

[Chris Jones]

"less about getting an audience to agree with it (stop fucking doing that)"

This is actually a big problem I have with my own music criticism, and music criticism as a whole(EVERETT TRUE is the worst music critic of all time). I'm glad somebody said it.

[Tucker Stone]

yeah, i'm not much of a criticism scholar, but it seems to me to be pretty obvious that the ship has long sailed on trying to convince the people reading your shit that you're RIGHT about music/movies/what have you. it's not going to happen, it's a waste of one's time, and it just gets in the way of nailing what you dig or don't dig about something to the wall to sit around trying to counterpunch what you think people are going to argue with before the comments section opens up. begging for support just makes it seem like you're not sure about your own feelings, and if that's the case, you probably should hold off on publishing until you're done figuring that part out.

old habits are hard to break, i don't know. there's never going to be an intellectual salon on the internet. no matter what, people gotta stop trying to create their own fucking army.

[Tim O'Neil]

Nation of Millions better than Fear of a Black Planet? Like, definitively? If you asked me at gunpoint which was PE's "greatest" album, I'd probably prevaricate mightily, but in the end I'd have a hard time not giving that mantle to Black Planet - perhaps the greatest rap album ever? I'm not saying you can't make the argument either way, I could probably make as strong a case for Millions if I listened to one or the other more recently. But it's like Sophie's Choice, you know?

[AComment]

"liner notes" I think, unless you're talking about that rad new 1D release.

Steve Albini was a part of Rapeman which was named after the Japanese comic of the same name. There, back to comics in 2.

"While some readers will undoubtably fail to separate Weingarten's purposely abrasive public persona with his arguments, their loss is the don't-cares gain."
You know, this reminds me of something

[david brothers]

I need a copy of Deadly Edge like, yesterday.

[Chad Nevett]

If you haven't, you should try getting the four-volume complete Beckett from Grove Press. Two volumes of his novels, one of his plays/teleplays/screenplays, and one of his short stories/poems/criticism. Edited by Paul Auster, the books are absolutely gorgeous. Auster leaves out the plays that were published posthumously against Beckett's wishes as well as any poems written in French not translated by Beckett himself.

And, out of curiosity, when 33 1/3 does their open call for submissions, have you ever tried pitching? I did the last couple of times and will again. Something to keep in mind.

[Tucker Stone]

i've looked at those Grove editions, but I like mine better. They're old, got sentimental value, blah blah blah i'm a baby. The Grove ones are very pretty though.

I've never been tempted by that 33 1/3 thing. I'm happy with my little basement apartment here, the little things I do for the other sites. I do like reading what they put out. Some of those books are pretty great.

[Jim]

For those who know the Parker books, what would be the best place to start? I'm not terribly concerned with the chronology; I'm looking for the purest form of entertainment that this character and story type can provide. Incidentally, my books-to-read list grows almost every time I encounter this column. Thanks for the great reviews.

[Tucker Stone]

What a nice thing to say, Jim. Thanks.

Regarding your question--you really can just start at the beginning with The Hunter and plow on forward with very little disappointment. The only ones that I'd say aren't that great are Getaway Face and The Black Ice Score, but even those are only bad by comparison. If I had a gun to my head and had to pick some favorites, my current answer would be The Jugger, The Seventh and The Sour Lemon Score. (I haven't read all of the books myself.)

If you haven't checked out "The Violent World of Parker", you definitely should. Trey has a fantastic site going, and I can't think of anyone who provides a better introduction to the character or the books. http://violentworldofparker.com/

[AComment]

Oh parker, 16 books in 10 years? That's certainly some consumable litratur there