Postmodernist writer Don DeLillo is not known for spelling out his intent. Instead, the idea of a "history" is to submerge you in the surroundings and then feed you breadcrumbs of its central structure to piece together—a recreation of our standard of living.
To DeLillo, writing is a solitary pursuit. "I lived in a very minimal kind of way (in an apartment near New York City's Queens/Midtown Tunnel.) My telephone would be $4.20 a month. I was paying rent of 60 dollars. I was becoming a writer." In Seventies New York, this new bohemian lifestyle attracted people to move to less-manicured parts of the city. To DeLillo, this submersion allowed him to shut out current movements from his writing.
After a decade as a "cult writer," DeLillo leaped to "critical star" with 1985's "White Noise." Once he won the National Book Award, his works would be analyzed, criticized, and cited as inspirations for a new generation of sequestering writers. Up against the muscle of true historians as he wrote about the Kennedy Assassination and Chairman Mao, DeLillo's "permanent outsider" point of view would be championed by David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, and Thomas Pynchon.
However, this style of writing can take away its escapism. So, DeLillo went "underground," and emerged in 1992 with the short story "Pafko At The Wall" in Harper's Magazine. DeLillo said writing this gave him "the most pleasure," and he never wanted it to end. At the center of this story is one of the 20th Century's greatest moments in Sports - "the Giants win the pennant!" On October 3, 1951, the New York Giants baseball team (pre-relocation) completed an amazing comeback winning 37 of their last 44 regular season games to tie crosstown archrivals the Brooklyn Dodgers (also, pre-relocation.) Down 4-2 in the ninth inning facing certain elimination, Giant Bobby Thomson hit the three-run "shot heard 'round the world" that sent the Giants to the World Series (against another crosstown foe - the New York Yankees.)
The game and its excitement filter through the crowd assembled at the Polo Grounds, through radio broadcasts echoing everywhere in the steamy metropolis including the prison at Rikers Island. It is not that DeLillo is reveling in his love of the game. The game is the backdrop as a wide swath of American lives are focused on the same source of continuous optimism. In addition, it is not that DeLillo wants to be there for the event - he wants to be everywhere for it. So, he places you in the press box, on the field, outside the stadium, in local businesses. For once in Literature, you are made into the omniscient subject of a narrative not just feasting on narration.
Finishing the story (although, DeLillo would claim later that he never really ended it,) "Pafko" became the prologue to his massive 1997 novel "Underworld," with the ball that Thomson sent over the wall as the uniting element in two generations of American life. But, save that for another day, for the Prologue is one of the most riveting, beautifully composed, genuine statements about modern American life you have ever read (and re-read.)
He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.
DeLillo is concerned with the forgotten details. It is like finding a classic TV show on YouTube pulled from a VHS tape. Sure, you giggle at the garish period fashions of the day. Once you settle into the story, you are blocked from that by its timelessness. However, if you are lucky. The uploader saved the commercials and their a barrage of period-centric fonts, theme music, and simple photography. This is broadcast from the past is meant to find that previously unknown yearning and wake up your feelings about the actual past.
All buses, trains, and people are heading in the same direction. A common goal is shared so for once it feels like there is no built-in fear of the proverbial "other." In fact, all these people descending upon this event are afraid of one thing - the Giants losing. Now, around them, the world is spiraling into a Cold War, and social unrest is on the horizon. However, in DeLillo's skillful eyes, even the kid Cotter Martin who has leaped over the gate and eluded a cop to get here finds comfort in being lost in this throng.
The radio crew bringing this monumental event to the masses are crammed into a small booth that has to be separated with a hung blanket. Stars in the crowd include the strange pre-Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and...J.Edgar Hoover ("What's the nation's number one G-man doing with these crumbums?") When plays go wrong, attendees scrape up every piece of paper, tissue, napkins, etc to pelt the offending warrior with. When play is going the way of the Giants, you can feel the crowd as one amorphous body deciding whether to save or use applause, chants, and cheers. At times the only action in the stands is the expert-level hurling of bags of peanuts. Or, if you were lucky, watching how Sinatra reacts to Gleason as he mugs, clowns, and entertains those in his coterie.
Unbeknownst to anyone there, a special agent delivers Hoover the news of a real big bang - the Soviets have been testing an atomic weapon. There is so much to think about and digest as fans shout Honeymooners lines for Gleason to quote ("to the moon, Alice!") Up in the booth, twin technologies are passing like ships in the night as the radio announcer slips over to call the game for television while trying to drown out the ticker-tape presence of telegraphs tapping out Morse Code.
This is DeLillo's world. If we were lucky enough to see it launched into a film (the book's title is derived from a nonexistent Sergei Eisenstein film that shows up as a plot point,) the dizzying haze of period-era fedoras and dressed-up sensibility would be lost in a haze of Chesterfield smoke. However, as DeLillo plants the seeds of his Cold War history in this prologue (keep your eyes on the ball,) you cannot tear yourself away from the events of the day. He is allowing us to imbibe language, looks, and even gaze into a post-WWII world that was almost entirely in step with each other. Sixty pages fly by and even though you know the ending - DeLillo's real stroke of brilliance is to not blatantly show you too much of where the real novel begins.
—
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
New music this week
JOHNNY BLUE SKIES - Passage Du Desir
[GOLD LP/CD](High Top Mountain/Thirty Tigers/The Orchard)
Johnny Blue Skies is another incarnation in the career of Sturgill Simpson. Like many of Sturgill's albums, Johnny Blue Skies is an album-long rebirth for the artist. At press time, we have no idea what style or type of music he is pursuing as there is no lead single or much information. Prepare yourself for eight new songs with some longtime players and producers under this new identity.
BILLY STRINGS - Live Vol. 1 [BLUE 2LP/2CD](Reprise)
Blurgrass superstar Billy Strings finally makes his major-label debut with an album of live highlights. The set of (mostly) fan favorites culminates with a live version of "Turmoil & Tinfoil" recorded on New Year's Eve 2023 in New Orleans.
HARDY - QUIT! [LP/CD](Big Loud)
Philadelphia's Michael Hardy is back again (with help from secret weapon Joey Moi) with an album that ventures further into his rock sound. With guests Fred Durst and Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers, "QUIT!" has already placed five singles (especially the title cut - based on a comment a customer once shoved in his tip jar) in the Hard Rock Top 5.
PHISH - Evolve [BLUE LP/CD](JEMP)
For the first time in four years, Phish returned to the studio to record their sixteenth album. "Evolve" is not entirely new. "Oblivion" has been slipped into live sets for nearly a year now, while six of the album's thirteen cuts appeared on previously released solo projects. Under the wise hands of Bryce Goggin and Vance Powell, "Evolve" sounds bright and lively like Eighties Dead.
CIGARETTES AFTER SEX - X's [CLEAR LP/DLX LP/CD/CS](Partisan/Redeye)
How Greg Gonzalez's whispery-yet-heated romantic music became so popular that the San Antonio trio could mount an arena tour is a mystery. However, everything that is good about CAS is just that. Are they shoegaze? Slowcore? Indie Rock? Perhaps, it is because the haze of their sensual music often hangs around after the track is over ("Apocalypse" has an amazing 1.3 billion streams as much as The Beatles' "Here Comes The Sun.") The band has already hit several new peaks in the run up to "X's."
2023's single "Bubblegum/Stop Waiting" was a high watermark exceeded by this album's steamy "Tejano Blue." Gonzales' limited delivery is made even more effective by his pensive lyrics. This is melancholy mixed with simmering desire. So when he mutters "I felt happy there" on "Bunker Hill," the feeling you are left with is present-day hole the loss has created being surrounded by everything other than happiness. In addition, for this third album, CAS's mysterious sound has grown to regularly envelope you with their use of space much like haunted soundtracks to dark romances like "Twin Peaks." This is not just heartbreak. It is a testament to how it lingers and seeps into everything you own.
CLAIRO - Charm [PURPLE LP/CD](Virgin)
REMI WOLF - Big Ideas [LP/CD/CS](Island)
Working with former Daptone Leon Michels (hot off producing Norah Jones' "Visions,") Clairo visits the breathy scope of Seventies Pop. The overt Pop reach "Sling" with Jack Antonoff translated into several songs of immediacy. For "Charm," Clairo is masking her emotions behind this new sad-but-happy persona. "Nomad" is elegantly structured to work in opposition to the growing mass of sexually-charged/empowering post-Taylor Pop that has hit the airwaves. What is surprising is how even with Michels beats and instrumentation, "Charm" is not necessarily Soulful. Lead single "Sexy to Someone" takes its hip-hop gallop and piano strikes to create a well-mixed song. However, the coquettish delivery loses the song's summer heat and the lyrics lose their purposeful implications as a result. Like touring mate Beabadoobee, they are both edging toward their so-called "breakthrough" hits by giving up too much of what made them stand out in the first place.
Remi Wolf has always seemed like she would do anything for Pop stardom. "Big Ideas" strives to cram all of her ideas in there, but credit Wolf with staying mostly true to her original intent. "Motorcycle" is both sexy and silly - the latter woefully absent from a lot of today's Pop hits. Over the steamy slow burn music, in her most kitten-esque way she teases with domesticity ("We could get a house, we could get a dog,") which feeds the ongoing refrain of "motorcycle" with a sense of escape. "Toro" barely rises from its typical Indie Rock/Dance production (Leon Michels, again) but it only on the passionate-but-gated scream of Wolf on its Chappel Roan-style peak.
Two albums of the same make/manufacture with two completely different results - this is where we are now - divided even in Pop music.
