Sometimes it feels like the best novelists are pranksters. Perhaps they are. David Foster Wallace's gargantuan 1,079-page postmodern nesting-doll novel "Infinite Jest" is supposed to be an amusing read. Wallace clearly saw the future in 1996 as sponsorship, massive ingestion of information, and being shuttered from time to time to somehow make sense of it all. Whether Wallace was actually toying with us as readers remains unfounded - perhaps giving avid readers so much joy in revisiting its exploded view of an absurd world.
Its antecedent, 1973's "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon, is slightly more manic and darker in its humor. Pynchon clearly knew there was nothing whatsoever funny about war or its looming threat. However, he also wanted to communicate that sometimes we do need to laugh out loud in the face of adversity to just keep going.
The simple fact that both of these mammoth works fall into numerous lists of "All-Time 100 Greatest Novels" is enough to at least merit taking a bite of a few hundred pages every now and then. The stream-of-consciousness writing that began with Marcel Proust and Dorothy Richardson was perfected by James Joyce. 730 pages of "Ulysses" need its own sizable reference book to accompany even the shortest read. While the 100-letter words of "Finnegan's Wake" (also known as thunders or thunderwords), led to a generation of debate and misunderstanding.
Instead, we must travel back to 1916's "The Portrait of The Artist As Young Man" to truly tap into stream-of-consciousness writing and its power. Joyce's condensation of the "Stephen Hero" tale into five chapters led to a story that materializes from inner dialogue and careful use of words. One hundred years later, "Ducks, Newburyport" updates and actually sharpens those techniques to join together the best aspects of all the aforementioned works.
Ellmann's 2019 prize-winner consists of roughly one sentence stretched across 1,030 pages. This is one near-book-length internal monologue. Because Ellmann has such command of the language, the narrator's firehose-whoosh of thoughts never grow repetitive. In addition, Ellmann peppers the text with the necessary details that make you recoil from giving her your sympathy but still remain both empathetic and interested in where this journey is going. Like Wallace, our protagonist is throwing darts at a dartboard of commentary (celebrity, homelife, health issues, career, culture, and more). However, unlike Wallace, the best portions of "Ducks" feel like they are going to elicit conversation.
We meet an unknown woman from Newcomerstown, Ohio. Married mother of four. A history professor at a nearby college on medical sabbatical for treatment of both a heart defect and cancer. We learn about her family almost by accident. Her razor-sharp attention to detail occasionally lets something in that opens the door into her life. She loves words. They are tangled up and she regularly chooses one that often leaps from the page - leaving you to repeat it with her aloud feeling how it tantalizes the tongue or challenges the lips. Either way, the important fact to bear in mind is that our narrator is stringing this whirlwind of thoughts together so as to not think of those events, potential events, occurrences, or people that are truly affecting her life.
While it may be dated by its choice of details, the same feeling of dread that overarches Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," hangs over certain passages. Her "local" problems are constructed by Ellmann to act as symbols of larger ones. (My one example: Forced by her medical recovery to make pies at home to sell, she is stranded one day in the cold winter by a flat tire. With no cell phone, she is forced to wait for a driver to stop to help out. That aid comes in a tow-truck driver who stops named Jesus.)
As you can surmise, there is a lot to work through to arrive at these points of thought being provoked. However, would you also say that about your own daily life as well? Ellmann is taking the same observations that so many authors (Virginia Woolf, for example) use to illustrate the mundanity of life and turning them upside-down and backward.
The question that will be on the tip of your tongue is "Why?" That is where this stream-of-consciousness prose and its history have no true answer. There is nothing monolithic about "Ducks, Newburyport." In 10 years, some of its facts will need Wallace-like footnotes. However, like the ornate fiction of Pynchon, those may allow the real world to grow somewhat "otherworldly." Still, this hybridized mix of intimacy, triviality, and fact might actually reflect our daily consumption of information - which could grow even more voluminous and compartmentalized in the future.
"Ducks, Newburyport," for its modernity, conversational tone and multi-level combination of the tradition of stream-of-consciousness, may be your best entrance into this challenging prose.
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
New This Week
KURT VILE - Watch My Moves
[LP/CD](Verve)
Moving to a major label (one personally revived for him) is a tall order for the lanky, lackadaisical daydreaming of Kurt Vile. There is no real change in sound for Vile (nor has there ever been.) "Watch My Moves" might be the perfect post-pandemic music. The songs move slowly like clouds passing overhead. Tracks like "Like Exploding Stones" has repeated choruses that feel mantra-like and slow your breathing. His wash of guitars on "Mount Airy Hill (Way Gone)" is as gentle as a single could be right now - which as Spring grows into Summer is the perfect time for this level of relaxation and observation.
Reissues This Week
RUSH - Moving Pictures
[LP BOX](Mercury/UME)
POLICE - Greatest Hits
[2LP](UME)
The Eighties have been back in style for quite some time now. You see little bits of the Nineties in various fashion, hair, and especially streaming shows - but to be honest - their ongoing success is rooted in that wretched age of excess.
Rush entered the world as one of the first Canadian exports to America. They sang to the "Working Man" first in a helium-laced Led Zeppelin-esque RAWK high. However, their true success came when they matured into a Prog band that could obscure all of its changes and simply RAWK. Oddly enough, it was Stewart Copeland's drumming and The Police's short, spiky (like their bottle-blond hair) Pop-turned-Punk that led to their embracing more technology and more concise songwriting. Their first taste of commercial success came from 1980's "Permanent Waves" where they pumped their radio hits ("The Spirit of Radio" and "Freewill") and still pulled together Prog-ish "suites" to satisfy the longtime fans.
Their revitalized and very modern sound led to those boundaries disappearing on their best album ever, 1981's "Moving Pictures." Here the "radio" songs (concert staple "Limelight" and the immortal "Tom Sawyer") actually bookend the propulsive Prog of "Red Barchetta" and the scintillating instrumental "YYZ.” Flip the record over, and Rush further blurs the lines between three of their most underrated songs "Witch Hunt," "Vital Signs" and the eleven-minute "The Camera Eye" which actually starts complex only to grow toward being more straight-forward.
"Moving Pictures" was a massive success. All seven tracks were AOR radio classics. Their live videos (especially "Red Barchetta" and "Tom Sawyer") were early MTV staples. Over time, even as their followup albums changed in sound and producer (the next album, the underrated "Signals," would be longtime producer Terry Brown's last - he was no fan of the extensive use of synthesizers and electronics.) Amazingly, Rush would continue to have radio hits, and their high degree-of-difficulty solos and breaks would lead new generations of fans back through their rich catalog.
This 40th-anniversary edition features the 2015 remaster and a previously unreleased concert from March 25, 1981, in Toronto where they intersperse the entire "Moving Pictures" album into a set of classics. (It should be noted that these Rush Deluxe edition concerts have introduced some unknown career highlights including the live "2112" and "Something For Nothing" from Massey Hall 1976, a surprising 1980 rendition of "By-Tor And The Snow Dog" from Manchester, and the amazing saved-only-on-cassette version of "2112" from Arizona in 1978 that ends the Deluxe "Hemispheres.")
The Police outside of inspiring this major change in Rush rode an unpredictable wave of US success to the top the charts with their final album before leaving on top. Their pasts were Prog Rock. Stewart drummed in Curved Air. Andy played in Gong (among many others.) Sting played sort-of-fusion jazz bass. Fueled by the palate cleanser of Punk and the creative management of Stewart's brother Miles, The Police entered the world as a trio (when no one else would dare to do that - well, except maybe Rush) and danced unafraid into complex Pop dusted with Punk's growl and driven by a unique Reggae lilt.
Right off the bat, their 1978 single "Roxanne" aroused controversy. Promoted as "Banned by the BBC," it took off as did the photogenic band. Fortunately, The Police garnered enough UK success to lead to a guerilla-like US tour. This frenetic Ford Econoline van tour of America gave the band their reputation as ambitious and upwardly mobile (two traits that would become synonymous with the Eighties.)
Fortunately, the success in the US led to more attention in the UK, which in turn created more buzz in the US. By pitting these two growth patterns against each other, The Police were in the press for an alarming amount of time - but always capable of following the hype with brilliant albums and singles. It was definitely a high-wire act that could pay off - even if it was taking a toll on their relationship as a band. 3 #1 singles in the UK were finally enough to get US radio to play along. "Message In The Bottle," "Walking On The Moon," and their first US Top 10 "Don't Stand So Close To Me" along with every chart single leading to their worldwide #1 "Every Breath You Take" is here with a large chunk of their final record "Synchronicity" all arranged to capture the fury of their reach and capture of that golden ring.
