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Better Than Friday - 244 (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-11 03:10:57
Edited:
2024-05-11 03:16:03
Imported:
2026-09
Tags:

Content

Good evening friends, hope you're having a fine evening.

Just posted a review of The Complete Poems of Hart Crane early for patrons.

Hope to see you at the second Sexual Personae livestream tomorrow evening at 7PM EST.

Thanks so much for your continued support.

 

1. I Gotta Read This - The Cults of the Roman Empire by Robert Turcan (Paid Link)

Looks to be a good addition for the Sexual Personae series.

I definitely would not recommend buying it 'New', though.

2. I've been told my 'Lord of Dark Places' Review inspired this Catalan translation and edition.

That is so cool.

Big thanks to Charles for originally recommending it to me.

3. RIP Steve Albini

Along with all the great albums he produced, Big Black had some solid tracks.

Kerosene's a classic.

4. Writers from Other Europe

This was brought to my attention by friend and patron Matthew, thank you!

Philip Roth brought attention to European writers mostly unknown at the time to American readers.

Tons of great names in here, Bruno Schulz, Witold Gombrowicz, Bohumil Hrabal, Milan Kundera.

I'll be reading my way through the list.

5. A Shark that lives for over 500 Years

That is scarcely believable.

As the article says, they're also the longest living vertebrae and the only animal that can swim in Arctic Ocean year-round.

 

Weedon Island Preserve | taken by Lynn

Files

Comments

Michael Masiello

Albini’s death really hit me. He was a huge influence on the bands I was in in the early nineties—Big Black, the unfortunately-named Rapeman (named after a Japanese comic book superhero, IIRC), and Shellac were, along with the Jesus Lizard (whose great albums he recorded), indescribably formative for me (I saw Shellac and the JL in their primes—a lot). And I knew him a little. He recorded a demo for one of those bands. He was gracious and funny and accommodating and didn’t say an unkind word, despite the fact that we were recording music that was transparently an inept imitation of music he made in one way or another. We stayed at his house to do that, slept on his couches. (This was before he built Electrical Audio.) Late in the session we had, like so many nobody bands of the time, paid altogether too little for given the man’s stature, he and I got into a discussion of John Barth while he was smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes—so here I was, awed to be in the presence of a hero of mine, suddenly doing my best to speak intelligently about Lost in the Fun House and Giles Goat Boy. The loudmouthed alcoholic guitarist of my band piped up after ten minutes of this to suggest that we get back to mixing. Albini, without batting an eye and with friendly humor (where he might have shown irritation), said “Shush. The adults are talking about important stuff.” He was, in other words, a reader. This was back in 1997 or 1998–he mentioned that he enjoyed and was amused by this “new metal band” he’d heard, Meshuggah. So he was in his thirties. Two seconds later he’s 61, I’m pushing 51, and he’s gone. It’s as you always say, Cliff. Nature is ruthless (Godflesh’s song “Iesu” is the stark truth). We are all one step from the end. Our lifespans are an eyeblink. But Albini certainly did something with his time—many things, actually. And as only brave people do, he grew as he aged. My favorite tune on Atomizer is a sleeper: “Bad Houses,” the oddly beautiful thing that follows “Kerosene.” But my intro to him was Songs About Fucking. And the song of his we covered in the early 90s was “Ready Men,” from Headache. We never did manage to get our guitars to sound like that, though. Like someone cutting sheet metal with a chainsaw. Or pavement saw, I suppose. He was a giant. He was the first hero of mine—when I was still young enough to have “heroes”—I ever met. So much so that I keep thinking of Lou Reed, also gone, singing about Delmore Schwartz in “My House”: “He was the first great man that I had ever met.” Anyway. We’ve lost more people than I can count, and the furniture of my Gen X world is stripped away by the day. But I haven’t felt so personally wounded by a death since we lost Lemmy, Bowie, Prince, Umberto Eco, and Leonard Cohen inside of twelve months. So I thought I’d leave a little remembrance of Albini here. Carry on.

Matthew D

Writers from the other Europe is no longer in print, but you can still buy used copies. However, there are some newer editions and new translations of some of the books. Tadeusz Borowski's "This way to the gas, ladies and gentlemen" is particularly rough (he was a forced non-Jewish worker at Auschwitz). Some of the other books in the series have been turned into famous films like "Ashes and Diamonds", about Polish resistance fighters in WWII.