One of the unwritten keys to reading Bellow's 1953 novel "The Adventures of Augie March" is to not necessarily let it fall into its sometimes-mentioned realms of classification. While it is funny in places and his exploits leave you shaking your head at their sheer ineptitude, it functions within the lines of consequences more than a picaresque like John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces." For example, we know from the start that given Ignatius' appetite and lack of self-control he should have never taken a job pushing the Lucky Dog cart. We laugh because in this case, his faubles are also ours. As a bildungsroman, we see the slow growth in Augie because he is slowly changed by the experiences of the growing world around him. However, even at its darkest points, we never get that sense of this tragedy, loss, failure, or predatory misunderstanding leading to the expected "coming of age." "Augie March" works because we as readers are just as affected (if not more) than he is. If a literary parallel is rendered necessary for this continuing journey, let it be Winston Groom's "Forrest Gump."
Away from the post-Georgie battlefield of his ramshackle house, Augie takes a job as a caretaker for the informed but still unflappable Einhorn. Bellow immediately leads with Augie's admiration of him as when in thought he asks himself "What would Caesar suffer in this case? What would Machiavelli advise or Ulysses do? What would Einhorn think?" Bear in mind, that Augie is a high-school junior at this time and Einhorn is one of the largest owners of real estate around (even with the 1929 crash waiting in the wings.)
The Einhorns are a huge elaborate family full of characters and most importantly the absent father figure in Augie's young life. If you shook your head at some of Augie's schemes and decision-making before, with the Einhorns he grows into a fairly brilliant observer. Einhorn's father, a Mark Twain-like patriarch is known simply as "The Commissioner." Under Augie's watchful eye we learn that The Commissioner is more agile than his son and his last-generation ability to make money outweighs his lechery. The Commissioner's other son (married four times) is the uncharacteristic "Dingbat," a wiry, bantam unblinking fighter whose loyalty seems to be valued above all. While Dingbat is not a product of the intelligent genetics of the family, Einhorn himself has enough to cover them all.
Again remember, Bellow placed Einhorn on a pedestal for us to read. So, it is very easy to see that Augie may be looking at him through rose-colored glasses. His actions are quick and decisive. Augie almost fully takes care of him from start to finish on his day. As he handles this wheelchair older man with attention, you wonder if he is doing this to prove to Grandma Lausch and Simon that he could have done the same for Georgie. The experiences that Augie has with the male Einhorns are both shaping his writing and separating him from the family. (Simon sees Augie carrying a glass of Coca-Cola to Einhorn in a crowd of businessmen, laughs, and says "So this is your job! You're the butler!")
The simple fact is Einhorn is an excellent judge of character. His being "crippled" has filled him with the idea that work is everything. In addition, his inability to move leads to his mind always staying three or four steps ahead of everyone else. He may be using Augie as one of his instruments that helps him shave on his own or some other invention, but Augie has immediately realized this is more educational than school (or for that matter serving Grandma Lausch.) Einhorn's organization is Augie's structure in lessons. In a very Pynchon-esque (yet another huge admirer of this novel) passage, Augie takes us through the contents of Einhorn's office and how the paralyzed Einhorn could spend an entire morning ordering everything that was free in the newspaper ("stamps, little tubes of lilac perfume, packages of linen sachet, Japanese paper roses that opened in water,") volumes of reports and government literature, writing his own publication called "The Shut-In" and winning five dollars from a contest in the newspaper.
Einhorn as a speaker is an even more intellectual pursuit. Here is where Augie's admiration for him becomes the catalyst for his own intelligence to take root. The previous life led in opposition meets its match as Einhorn is ready to burst the bubble of myths left and right. As an invalid, his most fascinating screed is on the history of "cripples," "the dumbness of the Spartans, the fact that Oedipus was lame, that gods were often maimed, that Moses had faltering speech and Dmitri the Sorcerer a withered arm, Caesar and Mahomet epilepsy, Lord Nelson a pinned sleeve." Einhorn is not elevating himself to be in this company, he is acknowledging to Augie that his state is his life. In a beautiful illustration, Einhorn explains his philosophy and its process:
I used to think I'd either walk again or else swallow iodine. I'd have massages and exercises and drills, when I'd concentrate on a single muscle and think I was building it up by my will. And it was all the bunk, Augie... I couldn't take it and I took it. I can't take it, yet I do take it. But how! You can get along twenty-nine days with your trouble, but there's always that thirtieth day.
Einhorn is so carefully mapped out and given so much thought that as a curious reader, you want to backtrack his statements and see if they are true. Yet, his train of thought is so crisp and clear, that you see why Augie would see this caretaker position as an opportunity. Grandma Lausch was nearly broken by her fear of death. A chill went up her arm, she panicked and then felt changed in the family's eyes afterward. Einhorn lives with it to the point Augie theorizes that Death: "Who maybe was the only real god he had."
Often I thought that in his heart Einhorn has completely surrendered to this fear. But when you believed you had tracked Einhorn through his acts and doings and were about to capture him, you found yourself not in the center of a labyrinth, but on a wide boulevard; and here he came from a new direction.
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Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
NEW MUSIC This Week
CHAI - Chai [LP/CD/CS](SubPop/AMPED) | KX5 - KX5 [LP] (Mau5trap/Arkade Made/The Orchard) • Dance music continues its reclamation on Indie Music and Pop. Once known for more "cheerleader" style almost Punk-y Dance music, Chai reframes the funky underpinnings of their 2021 single "Action" on this smooth new album that is less frenetic and more focused on the dancefloor bumping of new acts like Girl Ray and the queen of it all Roisin Murphy.
The powerful EDM duo of Deadmau5 and Arkade join forces on a Bonobo/Odesza-ish collaborators that bring in an excellent selection of vocalists (Hayla's quiver makes "Escape" achieve velocity) as they revisit 2008's Dubstep structure (listen for the drop) and throwback to classic House music.
DOJA CAT - Scarlet [CD](Kemosabe/RCA) • Doja Cat is one of the most underrated yet omnipresent artists on the charts. As a rapper, singer, songwriter, and producer, Doja Cat has chalked up numerous hits as a solo artist and featured one. Since breaking through in 2020 with "Say So," Doja has charted seven Top singles, the blazing lead single from "Scarlet," "Paint The Town Red" is her first worldwide #1. Once criticized as "too pop to be a rapper," "Scarlet" is her proving them all wrong with a straight wall-to-wall Hip-Hop album.
TEENAGE FANCLUB - Nothing Lasts Forever [LP/CD](Merge/ AMPED) • For a band reared in the slacker-led sardonic Nineties, Scotland's Teenage Fanclub has found a strange method to age gracefully: embrace it. Forever blessed with heavenly harmonies and indelible hooks, "Nothing Lasts Forever" is modeled after the late Sixties Byrds albums where their mixture of beautiful voices and plangent lyrics hinted to the world at large that there was tension that led to this sense of tranquility. "Back To The Light" recaptures that classic TFC jangle which makes 1991's "Bandwagonesque" timeless. "Foreign Land" takes an even bigger chance by hiding the distorted lead in the mix to carry that California haze through to its revival as Eighties Paisley Underground.
REISSUES OF THE WEEK
TOM WAITS - Swordfishtrombones/Rain Dogs [LP](ANTI/Epitaph/AMPED) • Hunter S. Thompson famously said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Between 1980's final album for Elektra/Asylum "Heartattack and Vine" (whose boozy clanging title track opener hints at this new direction) and the complete freedom of his new home on Chris Blackwell's Island Records in 1983, the ideas that Tom Waits had for songwriting completely changed. For listeners who followed him in the Seventies, these two red-eyed wild affairs have more in common with The Residents and Captain Beefheart. Drums are primitive and pounding, and instruments are mixed to sound like outliers. The vibraphone sounds like empty bones. The guitar twangs in its most high-pitched tense manner. "16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six" from "Swordfishtrombones" is a howler that makes you feel intoxicated and thankful you swerved into Waits' second act of misadventure. Surprisingly, "Swordfishtrombones" was a small hit in the UK and Europe and a massive hit with critics. So two years later Waits wheezes all the life he has in his brilliant lyrics into the chaos of "Rain Dogs." Years later, it is still hard to determine whether Waits has more control over one album or the other - because now we expect him and his acolytes to sound this way. Nonetheless, the striking homemade percussion, Marc Ribot's magical guitar, and Waits "narrating" these sordid tales are things of beauty. As dispossessed as Waits might sound, there is a purpose here and fans were taking notice. long-time admirer Keith Richards guests. While it sizzles with menace, there is a spontaneity here that makes his version of "Downtown Train" far more sincere than the one that Rod Stewart took to #3 in 1989. Every little bit helps draw you deeper into the genius of Waits. "Rain Dogs" eventually went Gold.
THE REPLACEMENTS - Tim (Let It Bleed edition) [4CD/1LP] (Sire/Rhino/Warner) • With 50 unreleased tracks, this new voluminous edition of 1985's major label debut from The Replacements is ripe for future study. Mats historians will recall that Tommy Erdelyi (a/k/a Ramone) produced "Tim" and supposedly mixed the entire album on headphones. To correct that longtime facet/mistake (see also Iggy and The Stooges' 1973 classic "Raw Power" for remixing debates) "Let It Bleed" features new mixes from Ed Stasium, who went on to produce the underrated major-label debut from fellow Minneapolis band Soul Asylum (1988's "Hang Time") and the smash debut from Living Colour. Somehow the unflinching behind-the-curtain failure of the band (The late great Bob Stinson was still making pizzas while 1984's "Let It Be" was winning critics' awards and in high demand thanks to college radio) gave the Mats their best balance yet of craft and devil may care attitude. Their ability to veer from ragers ("Lay It Down Clown") to sincerity ("Left of The Dial") remains unmatched by anyone. "Tim" is Paul Westerberg's ascension as the writer and his acknowledgment that even the loneliest songs ("Swingin' Party") must have a beauty, while the blitzkrieg ("Dose of Thunder") refuses to hide its true intent. In addition to these new mixes, and demos, there is an unreleased concert from January 1986 in Chicago shortly before they made their first national TV appearance on "Saturday Night Live" (and were then banned from.) No matter what version of "Tim" you enjoy, this was one of the final albums that a band was able to make without too much interference or thoughts of marketing and influence. "Tim" peaked at #183. The Mats never had a Gold album.
