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Reviews (60)
10 December 2011
A Delightful Little Book that will Make You Think Very Hard
3 of 3 found this helpful David Eagleman’s SUM: 40 Tales of the Afterlives is a book that you will continue to think about for a long time after you read it. If I was forced to put it into a category, I would have to call it “science fiction” because that is the only forum in which ideas such as these are regularly expressed and explored.
The short prose constructions presented here (it will hardly do to call them “stories” because they are descriptive rather than narrative) are exquisite in their concise elegance and beauty. Rather than being an exhaustive analysis or study of this framework, this little book is simply a refreshing walk through its landscape.
I will quote a Wikipedia entry which says this much better than I can:
“Eagleman refers to himself as a Possibilian and to Sum as a reflection of that position. According to his definition, possibilianism rejects both the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and the certainty of atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground.
The possibilian perspective is distinguished from agnosticism in that it consists of an active exploration of novel possibilities and an emphasis on holding multiple hypotheses at once when no data is available to privilege one position over the others.
Possibilianism is understood to be consonant with the "scientific temperament" of creativity and tolerance for multiple ideas when there is a lack of data.”
29 December 2008
Soft Machine - Out Bloody Rageous ! - a history
3 of 3 found this helpful The Soft Machine was several bands in one. You probably already know something of the history of this magnificent band, but by way of a very brief overview: Australian Daevid Allen rented a room from the mother of Robert Wyatt (Ellidge) in about 1963. Kevin Ayers came around, the seed of the "Canterbury music scene" began to take root. The first band that sprang up was the “Wilde Flowers” which never gained a recording contract at the time, but made enough demos to justify a solid eponymous CD release 30 years later (search it out if you like this sort of thing). Allen lured Ayers and Wyatt away to form a rock band, and the remainder of the Wilde Flowers soon coalesced into the excellent Caravan. Adding classically trained keyboardist Mike Ratledge, and gaining permission from William Burroughs to use the title of his book as the band’s name, the Soft Machine took flight in early 1966. Allen was somewhat of a fumbling jazz guitarist (playing “sidereal dogfoot guitar”) at first, who claimed that seeing Jeff Beck lead the Yardbirds inspired him to become the lead guitarist of the Soft Machine.
The Soft Machine soon became darlings of the emerging London psychedelic scene, with legendary sets at the UFO Club along with their peers and comrades the Pink Floyd. Both bands, at that time, could be described as “psych-pop” concentrating on odd and catchy tunes with vocals. They recorded a 45 rpm single in January 1967, and a set of demos for Giorgio Gomelski in April 1967 with Daevid Allen on guitar (re-released over the years, often as “Jet Propelled Photographs” and highly recommended) before Allen was lost and the band continued as a trio. Ayers departed after the first album to be replaced by friend and roadie Hugh Hopper.
As the Pink Floyd lost Syd Barrett and became more instrumentally oriented, so the Soft Machine lost Allen, then Ayers, and finally Wyatt, and morphed into a pure jazz-rock outfit. But early on, they were solid rock bands with a popular following among the early London hippie rock fans.
By “Third” the Soft Machine was a solidly jazz-oriented outfit. The surge in popularity of jazz with former rock fans, as they matured from their teen and 20s into their 20s and 30s, catapulted Soft Machine and its peers to the top of the heap of this new genre in England and on the Continent, but the pressure was commensurate with the success. I may be wrong, but I don’t think the same personnel appeared on any 2 of the Softs dozen or so original albums. Besides the fact that the band regularly expanded and contracted in size, even the leader and principal songwriter changed several times.
To me, the “classic” period from about “Third” through “Four” and “Five” was powerful and stimulating, but from about “Six” onwards the fire was certainly dying down. But that’s just my opinion, others may disagree.
This book is a carefully crafted document that helps us navigate our way through all the changes that took place, and is heavily weighted to the early years. Personally, that is what I wanted (obvious, isn’t it?). I was moved far more by the early incarnations as a psychedelic pop band than by the later jazz band. If you are at all interested in the confusing history of this band, this book is a good read and well worth the money. And if you are willing to spring for a little more, the accompanying 2-CD set is a fine overview of the band, and your best opportunity to procure those rare first 45 single sides. Highly recommended!
06 January 2009
Suttree - Cormac McCarthy's most compelling novel
2 of 2 found this helpful Cormac McCarthy has received a lot of accolades for his work, and certainly the most praise and money for “All the Pretty Horses” but I believe that “Suttree” is his best and most compelling work. Without a doubt, “Pretty Horses” was the most cinematic, and obviously made the best movie, but to me it felt forced and even contrived.
“Suttree” on the other hand, had a fierce feeling of realism throughout. Perhaps because I lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, while I was reading it, I felt all the more connected to the places and settings (even though it was a few decades later, and worlds apart socially). There was an underlying ease and familiarity with the stories and people who populated this book, as if he had known them all personally.
Suttree was an intelligent, educated, upper middle class young man who had turned his back on his life of comfort and chosen a very hard and poor path for himself. Why had he done this? Who can know? You could argue that this story is no more, or less, realistic and/or believable than “Pretty Horses” but I found it to be considerably more gripping and immediate.
This book is not for the faint of heart, no surprise that there is an underlying harshness to it, although I think that it would be considered less cruel, overall, than “Horses” but similar. Give it a read, this is an important and moving book.