Far Flung

Songwriting chameleon Josh Rouse played an hour-long set at World Cafe Live in Philly's University City this week, and I somehow found myself in a seat 20 feet from the stage. It's tough to watch him and not smile and clap along and be happy about your place in the world, even as he croons morose lyrics such as "We're going through the changes / Hopin' for replacement / Until we find a way out of this hole."

I first saw Rouse play out in 2007, at a storied club called the Tin Angel on Second Street. The Tin Angel show was in support of a then-forthcoming album "Country Mouse, City House," a marginal collection of songs compared with previous masterpieces "Subtitulo" and "Nashville." He's mellow. He's soulful. His lyrics tell textured stories about people who have screwed themselves into the dirt. "A Man Who ..." is one example: "He used to walk in Central Park where / At least a dozen women broke his heart / And there he'd sit and think about his past." He also writes about lost chances, lost battles and lost memories, among other things both found and misplaced.

Furthermore, his diverse catalog of work proves he has no trouble finding ways to outshine and reinvent himself. Rouse, who was born and raised in Nebraska, made his mark in Nashville and even farther-flung points before meeting the woman who eventually became his wife. The couple has since moved to Spain, and the experience appears to have heavily influenced his latest gem of an album called "El Turista"; he sings nearly half of the album's tracks in Spanish with, near as I can tell, perfect delivery.

On the whole, "El Turista" seems sunnier than his previous albums, and his World Cafe Live performance was comparatively upbeat next to his 2007 show. It makes one wonder if escaping the Midwest and living abroad -- settling in with a family -- has brightened his outlook. I've never been to Spain, but it's a close second to France in terms of European countries I hope to visit: lush flower-dotted hillsides, ancient architecture, tapas, wine-induced siestas, etc. As the title of Rouse's new album suggests, maybe he's comfortable being a full-time tourist and enjoying the treasures of a foreign land ... that is, when he's not playing small stages in the States.

More Words

I joined a library. How's that for riveting prose? Action, suspense and word economy, all in one simple sentence that even has an active verb! At any rate, it's not quite four months into the year and I've read 15 novels -- five more since the previous post about my meager 2010 literacy-related accomplishments. Once could say I've fallen into something of an Updike-Chabon-Roth rut, so I've added some new spice to the precarious pile atop the nightstand. On deck: works from Cheever, Fahy, Harrison, et al.

"The Maples Stories" by John Updike: A collection of short stories told as a running narrative about the co-mingled lives of a husband and wife -- the Maples -- at points both significant and mundane. Originally published piecemeal in prominent literary magazines, "The Maples Stories" details the airy ceilings and heart-rending bottoms of a marriage that eventually fails through no fault of the two people trapped within it. Grade: 5 out of 5 dangling participles.

"Of the Farm" by John Updike: Another story about -- you guessed it -- marriage and the innate pain of relationships. The main character returns to his family's rural Pennsylvania farm, this time with his second wife and a newly acquired pre-teen stepson. Uninspiring episodes of grass-cutting and other extended passages of blandness ensue. Grade: 3 out of 5 dangling participles.

"Everyman" by Philip Roth: A rumination on dying and the years that lead a man to the doorstep of death. Roth's main character lives a full yet somehow incomplete life as a jeweler, serial husband, philanderer and overall good guy but ultimately finds himself broken and quite literally dissected by a surgeon's scalpel as a result of randomness and imperfect DNA. Grade: 4 out of 5 dangling participles.

"The Final Solution" by Michael Chabon: A short novel that felt unnecessarily long. Chabon is a master wordsmith, and he delivers again in that regard because most of the book is rife with almost too many beautiful sentences. However, the story itself seemed to lack his trademark neck-snapping wit. Grade: 3 out of 5 dangling participles.

"East of the Mountains" by David Guterson: Man gets terminal cancer. Man decides he doesn't want to rot to death in a long-term care facility. Man plots his own suicide by making it look like a hunting accident. Man leaves for final trip with his two hunting dogs. Things don't go quite as planned. The end. A wonderful read, other than some World War II back story that plods along but is nonetheless necessary in establishing the main character's principal motivation. Grade: 4.5 out of 5 dangling participles.

Boxed In

I have been told by the few people close to me, both professionally equipped and otherwise, that I tend to "think too much." I suppose I understand the sentiment, in the "over-thinking" sense, because of that I am most certainly guilty. But why else would I have been granted the gift of a brain than to use it?

I remember driving along the California coast in late winter 2005, en route from the San Diego airport to some posh resort whose threshold my foot did not deserve to cross. With the afternoon sky melting into a soft and rich purple, I let the windows down to feel the salt air blow in from the Pacific. Rufus Wainwright's "Want One" provided the soundtrack, and the hopefulness and hopelessness he voiced in each impassioned dirge made me feel the hopefulness and hopelessness weighing down my own life. Even then I knew trouble lurked in a nearby space I could not quite touch or see, and it would find me in full less than a year later.

Life seems to be improving now, somehow, though the promise of escaping to San Diego, Chicago, Seattle, Orlando, Las Vegas and a thousand other points distant from Philadelphia seems farther away than ever. Even so, one could say I feel more connected, more in control, more in tune with the forces I'm supposed to believe will lead me to contentment, despite sinking deeper into the shadows of the box in which I have locked myself. I feel the absence of friends and lovers and enemies and colleagues who have gone elsewhere, moving through life away from the idiot in his box, leaving him to ponder his own culpability in the mess in which he still wallows. They fear his failure will infect them, I suppose.

I'm also beginning to understand that there exists only the veil of control, that the only way to gain true control is to remove oneself from everything that surrounds him: isolation and hermitage. Something about the chickens coming home to roost, as someone wiser and quicker yet much less punctual meeting his deadlines once told me. Again, the idea of this box encasing me. The image recalls a quote from Jim Harrison's "The Summer He Didn't Die": "His reaction to bad luck was to run to the woods, and his reaction to good fortune was the same." Or another from David Guterson's "East of the Mountains": "This isn't any way to live. ... I miss the world."

And I do. Miss it, I mean. I do.

The Worm Turns

I started reading books purely for enjoyment purposes just before my 20th birthday. Peter Benchley's "Beast," about a giant squid marauding the waters off Bermuda's coast, sucked me in and didn't let go. Early on it was Benchley and other suspense novels from the likes of Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, and then "Watership Down" by Richard Adams. I've since moved on to authors who write about why people do the things they do to each other, generally speaking.

Each year I would read 10, maybe 15 books a year. Then, at the end of 2007, I made it a goal to watch less television and read more often. Last year I finished 26 (not including three or four self-help books as well as short works by H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King) and, in the process, discovered some incredible authors such as Jim Harrison and Philip Roth, while weaning myself off the likes of Charles Bukowski. So far I have finished 10 books this year, as outlined below in order of completion.

"The Farmer's Daughter" by Jim Harrison: Harrison has been compared to Hemingway for his starved style, but I never quite saw the comparison. He's an excellent storyteller, and the three novellas in this book focus on broken characters trying to grasp the mistakes they've made or get past the wrongs others have done to them. A Michigan native, Harrison is strongly influenced by depression, lust and life in the Midwest.

"Couples" by John Updike: A long, dense, slog of a read but a rich and fulfilling story about a group of young couples and families trying to make it work in suburban 1960s New England. It quite brutally and honestly lays bare the challenges of fidelity and the need for something more.

"My Life as a Man" by Philip Roth: Last year I picked up his "The Dying Animal," which was one of the best books I read in 2009. Like Updike, his books focus on the inherent problems of monogamy and fidelity, as well as the unwavering strength of a sexual appetite. It's a clever fiction within a fiction about a somewhat successful writer trying to disentangle himself from a "nightmarish" marriage.

"In Patagonia" by Bruce Chatwin: Probably my least favorite book of the year, about one man's travels through the bleak South American region of Patagonia. Chatwin wanders the region, painting pictures of his experiences from one town to the next.

"The Summer He Didn't Die" by Jim Harrison: Another collection of novellas from the master. It ends with a cleverly told story called "Tracking" about Harrison's years traveling the world and finding out who he wants to be. Also, in the title novella he revisits a recurring character named Brown Dog -- a likable loser who spends his days living on the fringe in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

"Pilgrims" by Elizabeth Gilbert: Gilbert, the author of "Eat, Pray, Love," presents a fast-moving collection of short stories -- snapshots, brief moments in time -- that I can't say were all that memorable, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. The book's standout was "The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick" about a Hungarian magician who seems to lose his mind.

"Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout: A surprisingly good read. Strout's title character appears in an expertly woven-together tapestry of stories about the imperfect residents of Crosby, Maine. Olive endures an unfulfilling marriage, struggles with her own deficiencies and, in the end, finds happiness in the unlikeliest of places.

"The Other" by David Guterson: The author of "Snow Falling on Cedars" tells a story of two high-school friends who take starkly different paths -- one toward the normal life of a father, husband and schoolteacher; the other toward an ascetic existence in the remote woods of the Pacific Northwest. In essence, it's about the choices we make and what we forfeit by heading in one direction vs. another.

"A Month of Sundays" by John Updike: I love Updike and am now wrapped up in his "The Maples Stories," but "Sundays" paled in comparison to his other works I've read. The topic -- a disgraced preacher forced into "rehab" because of his serial bedding of lonely female parishioners -- interested me greatly, but the first-person narrative fell a little flat.

"Werewolves in Their Youth" by Michael Chabon: To steal a line from an old friend, Chabon "really knows his way around a sentence." In 2009 I finally finished "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which was most likely the best book I have ever read. This, a collection of shorts, certainly entertained me, but I wanted more from it -- namely, the richness and complexity of his novels.

The Thaw

Scenes from a long, cold winter: Hard pillows. Too much snow. Not enough coffee. Staring out windows into the gray. Wet asphalt. Headless snowmen. Sprouts. Catching up on iTunes. Ringing in the New Year with vomiting 17-year-olds and a kick to the skull. Philip Roth's "The Dying Animal" and "Everyman." Jim Harrison's "The Farmer's Daughter" and "The Summer He Didn't Die." Searching for signs of life. Staying still. Wondering what happened. Plotting a return to the Adirondacks. Looking for mountains to climb.

Finally starting to feel my age. Mystery bruises. Dirty carpets. Baby corn. Ancient maps of Chicago. Fifty Nine. Broken doors. Broken bones. Broken branches. Broken hearts. Cracks in the driveway. River Road. Icicles that could kill a man (or a woman). Envelopes that never come or take so long to get here that they might as well have never come. Too few zeroes. Villains. Wondering where I went wrong. Stripped screwheads. Sore knees. The metallic taste of blood. My last good decision. Downtown. Hairy legs.

Asparagus. Bags of apples. Ten pounds of blueberries. Sweating from hot mustard. Bars that deserve to be out of business. Green hotels -- not environmetally conscious ones, just green ones, as in pea or neon or emerald. Ends. Beginnings. Middles. Crossword puzzles. "The Far Side" cartoons. Spinning in circles. Already dead.

Clocks ticking. "Groundhog Day" starring yours truly. Letting days pass as if they don't mean anything. "The Happiness Project." Religion. Apathy. Murderous thoughts. Kindness. Holding doors. Kisses on cheeks. Kisses on lips. Kisses on open mouths. Scraping. Hardness. Movement. Fumbling. Gyrations. Hesitation. Stains. Dry-cleaning bills.

Why Guns 'N Roses sucks. Stretching. Getting ready for something to break or tear. Bikinis. Working at the hot-dog stand. Relish, anyone? William S. Burroughs "novels." Phones so quiet they might as well be unplugged. Nudes. The Clark. Driving to Boston. Heading west. Melting snow. Swollen rivers. Cold-blooded creatures emerging, feeding, fertilizing, repopulating. Thawing.

Death to All But Smooth Jazz!

Circumstances dictate that I've got Metallica on my mind. I loved their music when I was a teenager trying to "find myself." Now they seem somewhat anachronistic, if not totally irrelevant. They're holding on to something that's long dead. Irony.

I recently helped a friend box up the contents of his apartment in the course of his moving to a new place. He dialed up a custom Pandora channel on his laptop, thereby unleashing several old-school (or at least "older school") Metallica songs, including "Harvester of Sorrows" (language of the mad!) and "Four Horsemen." Oddly, the next day my e-mail inbox pointed me to this gem, which has since provided me with hours of clap-along joy. Today "Enter Sandman" seems vaguely memorable at best, but this version is better than the original ever was!