fiction

The Dry Mirth of Malice

Robert Cochrane — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 00:14:37 +0000

The Dry Mirth of Malice Robert Cochrane November 5, 2023 - 19:14

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Mistletoe Malice KATHLEEN FARRELL (Faber & Faber)

By the time of her death in 1999, the writer Kathleen Farrell hadn't published a novel since the 1962 appearance of The Limitations of Love; then came silence, though she continued to sporadically appear in various short story anthologies, sharing literary space with Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift, William Trevor, and Muriel Spark.

Farrell was, in many ways, a writer's writer. Her pared-down observations about human nature were much appreciated by a select few, but her works sold modestly and never made it into paperback. She remained valued by those who encountered her books, evidenced by the appreciative tone of the obituaries she garnered in celebration of a voice worthy of recall.

There remains unsparing darkness to her output; though never explicitly ruthless, her view of human nature was far from cozy; the reason why her tone may have jarred with a post-war audience seeking comfort instead of exposure. Her characters have been described as unsympathetic, which, indeed, they mostly are. It would have seemed a heresy to her to sweeten the truth she was trying to expose via her cryptic and steely observations. That would have utterly diminished the remit of her entire exercise.

Mistletoe Malice, her debut novel from 1951, contains all her future strategies. Dry in tone and challenging by nature, Farrell takes few prisoners. A woefully dysfunctional family gathers in a coastal cottage to celebrate Christmas under the watchful and controlling eye of their matriarch, Rachel, who is slavishly attended by her goose of a niece, Bess. As her brood assembles like a conference of unruly birds, tensions begin to creak, and ancient resentments raise their heads from long, disgruntled slumbers. It becomes the perfect setting for everything that Christmas shouldn't be but all too often is.

This novel seems better suited to present times than when it first appeared. Farrell's witty and unforgiving insights raise smiles of the knowing and uncomfortable kind. It is a perfect gift of discomfort dressed as a celebration. Endurance is maintained in the face of great expectations. All is deftly handled, and despite the characters being far from palatable, understanding, but not dislike, is the reader's ultimate reward.

Kathleen Farrell was friends with Ivy Compton-Burnett, Stevie Smith, and C.P. Snow. A survivor of a lost literary era, she played chess with Quentin Crisp and befriended Barry Humphries in his early days in London. For twenty years, she shared her life with the mercurial novelist Kay Dick, a relationship that physically ended in 1962 but which was only really concluded with Kathleen's death since they lived a stone's throw from each other in Hove.

Farrell remarked towards the end of her life that leaving her literary estate to anyone seemed futile since nobody would ever be interested in her work. She may have been pushed into the margins of memory by the angry young men of the Fifties and later by the cacophony of the swinging Sixties, but her relevance has rightfully resurfaced.

Here is a clear, fine intelligence, an observer of foibles, a voice from another time that so effortlessly transcends it.

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Unease in Sequence

Robert Cochrane — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 13:39:04 +0000

Unease in Sequence Robert Cochrane July 13, 2023 - 09:39

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Photo: Paul Hubbard

THEY (starring Maxine Peake)

Manchester International Festival

The John Rylands Library, Manchester, UK

5^th-9^th July 2023

The John Rylands Library is a late Victorian gothic masterpiece, an act of philanthropic largesse to the city of Manchester by the widow of the industrialist whose name it has long immortalised. It is also an unusual choice for a performance space, normally a place of hushed, almost hallowed silences, it has in recent days been the home of a uniquely inspired theatrical event.

The actress Maxine Peake is a personage not averse to risks and challenges, indeed if she were it is unlikely that she would have tackled the novel They by Kay Dick, but it is to the audience's benefit and the wider world's reward that she has. When the book appeared in 1977 anyone who held expectations of its author were in short supply. She hadn't published a novel for over fifteen years, and when this one arrived it was nothing like any of her previous works.

Set in a strange but unspecified future England it has an interlocking series of almost dreamlike vistas narrated by an observer whose gender the reader has no knowledge of. Paranoid in tone but deeply poetic in its pared down and spartan prose, it is a disturbing read. "They" are everywhere, in the distance or lurking nearby. Artists are taken away and returned if lucky as reprogrammed zombies. Paintings are removed from galleries. Pages are torn from books. It is indeed a grave new world.

The book sank at the time having garnered a cursory set of reviews, one describing it a "menopausal" and by 1980 was out of print and well on its way towards forgotteness. It is an example of the limitations of an audience's expectations of an author, a maverick arrival jars, though in the context of Kay Dick's life it makes sense. A friend of George Orwell's it was she who managed to get Animal Farm into print, hence the bleak, almost sci-fi tone of the book has antecedents. Apart from another largely autobiographical novel The Shelf, about a lesbian affair with a married woman who commits suicide, no further work emerged from the mercurial writer who died out of print and in obscurity in 2001.

What Maxine Peake (adapted and co-created by Maxine Peake, Sarah Frankcom and Imogen Knight) has done is to astutely and finely fillet elements of the story and turn it into a tightening knot of developing drama. The audience are facing each other as she prowls and paces the space between them, though some are lucky enough to be festooned in the cloisters to look down at the proceedings as though in a gallery. Peake reads from sheets. It has the feel of a lecture and sermon, combined with elements of "a happening." Her voice carries with the clarity of a birds aloft the magnificence of her setting. As she reaches the end of a page, she drops it to floor and whilst the performance progresses steps over them as though navigating a street of crazy paving. The evening darkens outside; hence the atmosphere is enhanced naturally by the fading light entering via the stained-glass windows. Her tale of grief and fear is almost too claustrophobic to sanction, but as the end nears, via the beautifully rendered prose, hope and defiance returns, and an edge of positivity remains. It is a deeply unsettling but rewarding accomplishment, deftly delivered but never overstated.

Kay Dick's novel was rediscovered and republished last year after a publisher's bidding war, to wide acclaim as a lost dystopian masterpiece with plaudits from Margaret Atwood and Edna O'Brien. Its themes of artistic sublimation and societal unease more pertinent to now than when it was written largely to be ignored. Maxine Peake's strikingly assured performance should be taken from city to city. This is a parable for our times, created long before them, that deserves to be staged, widely and in unusual places. That this one transpired in the sanctity of a magnificent library betrayed a neatness of touch, a deftness that will be hard though not impossible, to replicate.

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Then For Now

Robert Cochrane — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 21:29:03 +0000

Then For Now Robert Cochrane April 23, 2022 - 17:29

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Photo by Helen Craig. Flask Walk, London May 1962

They by Kay Dick

(McNally US / Faber & Faber UK)

By the time the novelist Kay Dick published They in 1977, she hadn't unleashed a novel since 1962 when Sunday appeared. That had been heralded as the first in a sequence that stubornly failed to materialise, as did her projected biographies of Colette and Carlyle. Advances paid were returned to the publishers and she, bedevilled by writer's block, garnered a reputation as a troublesome force, as well as an unreliable one. Deadlines for reviews were missed, and she became an exacting and techy presence.

These flaws were assiduously detailed by her former friend Michael de la Noy (1934-2002) in his obituary for her published in The Independent, over which he was roundly castigated. Though not untrue it was a slanted, unfair affair. Peter Burton (1945-2011), the writer and editor, another of her friends turned acquaintance, confided he'd turned down the brief for fear of falling into the trap that de la Noy undoubtedly had. Dick published a final novel in 1982 The Shelf a dissection of a lesbian tryst, and after that a literary silence descended till her death in 2001.

They was not a commercial success, garnered a few cursory, if non-plussed reviews, won an obscure literary prize, and was remaindered within two years. It is easy to see why. The novel is like nothing else she'd previously published. Dick's books were generally thinly disguised fillets of her own history served as fiction. They arrived devoid of those expectations and that context. A cuckoo of a work in her literary nest.

Hard to categorise it has elements of nightmare and fable, but possesses a haunting directness, a beautiful brevity of style. Her language is crafted and direct, effortlessly pared into ten interlocking pieces, a nightmare delivered in prosaic terms.

The central figure is never identified, a genderless figment of the reader's choice who exists in a world where the arts are under siege and emotions percieved as a flaw and a curse. Books vanish. Galleries emptied. Art is destroyed, their creators arrested to be reprocessed and returned mindless and submissive to a bland and sterile existence. All this is the work of "they" who are never explained, merely mentioned as a threat, a dangerous force seen distantly. There are elements of sci-fi without a space-age backdrop, which is rural England whose pastoral elements have been imbued with aspects of menace. A chilling and dystopian fable. A sinister work of tremendous panache that has survived to find a belated, audience, it would make a claustrophobic and haunting movie.

Dick's vision smacks of the harnessing of her creative and emotional fears, her paranoia, and unease. The book is never abstract, but has an element of disconnect at its heart. On reflection, it is not without context when viewed agaist the early days of her career. It is forgotten that she was by the age of 26 in the 1940s, the first female head of a publishing house in the UK. Good friends with George Orwell, Dick was the mitigating force, as evidenced by his inscription in her copy of Animal Farm, in getting that work published. Orwell's influence permeates They and is therefore a novel imbued by personal association, albeit in a lost context. A lingering influence that wasn't considered relevant in the seventies.

This is a book that richly deserves its strange return journey of recognition. Discovered in a charity shop in Bath for fifty pence, it has travelled swiftly forwards for genuine and deserved rehabilitation. The subject of an intense bidding war by publishers, and with accolades from Margaret Atwood and Edna O'Brien, my guess remains were she around, Kay Dick's exacting requirements and demands would have stalled, or derailed her moment of rediscovery. I never met her but via her former partner, the novelist Kathleen Farrell 1912-1999 felt the tremors and witnessed the rumblings of her mercurial, insecure nature.

Hers is a life worthy of reassessment and with They that process has begun. A striking figure, prone to outbursts of charm and generosity, as well as awkwardness, she struck a poised stance with her monocle, tweeds, and cigarette holder. A friend to the poet Stevie Smith, the novelist Ivy Compton Burnett, an associaton that culminated in an illuminating book, she remains a glimmering filament from a glittering literary time.

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Will You Be My Wife’s Girlfriend Again, Pretty Please?

Brandon Judell — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 14:29:17 +0000

Will You Be My Wife’s Girlfriend Again, Pretty Please? Brandon Judell August 26, 2021 - 10:29

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"Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with its own bisexuality," noted the late great complexity known as Kate Millett. Clearly an epigram that Oscar Wilde, if he'd been born a century later, would have been proud of parenting.

Director/writer Marion Hill's debut film, Ma Belle, My Beauty, has its verbally clever moments, too. Always delightfully adult, this offering, however, doesn’t deal with labels. No one seems to really care about the gender of the soul you are shacking up with or their ethnicity or their knowledge of wine. Well, the latter might not be true. "Let’s all just be happy" might have been the theme here, except Bertie, a jazz songstress, is currently not being very cheery. . . and she's in denial about why.

Well, let's start at the beginning. Once upon a time in New Orleans, before the film even begins, a straight French man (Fred) was involved with a bisexual woman (Bertie), who was very involved with her lesbian lover (Lane). This polyamorous trio all apparently lived gleefully together until they didn't. You see Lane disappeared one day without leaving a note. The cause: another gal.

(Before we go any further, please note polyamory is defined as "the practice of engaging in multiple romantic (and typically sexual) relationships, with the consent of all the people involved." Also, be aware that BRIDES.com is insisting as of this past July that polyamory "is having a moment." A previous such moment occurred, it notes, during the hippie era.)

Well, let’s jump ahead two years to where Ma Belle begins. Fred and Bertie are now married and living in an enviable home in Anduze, France, itself a visual paradise with a population clocking in at 3,400 amiable inhabitants. When nothing else is happening on-screen, your eyes can feast on the village’s centuries-old cobbled streets, a castle or two of note, vineyards galore, market-day throngs, and lush fields of green through which an emotionally frustrated character can jog when her intense feelings of irritation become a bit much.

Fred, portrayed by the exceedingly attractive Lucien Guignard, is a jazz musician with his own band that is about to tour Europe. Think Django Reinhardt. Complementing his skills is Bertie (Idella Johnson), a quite superb songstress, who has recently lost her lust for performing. To get her back to crooning, Fred secretly invites Lane (Hannah Pepper), a knapsacking free-spirit who might just be able get Bertie singing once again both off and on the mattress as she did in the past. But can Bertie ever forgive her?

The odds are 50/50 because being in love with Lane is similar to what the artist Kaari Upson described as "a constant state of something coming from the outside that you can't control, and everything can be gone at any minute."

Lane comes as off as one of those strong Beebo-Brinker-types: sinewy, forthright and always seemingly in control, yet 10% fucked up. Bertie is more in the Earth Mother category with a body that seems ever ready to comfort, nurture, and inspire Joni-Mitchell song lyrics. She's about 25% fucked up.

Those percentages of F.U.-ness do admittedly rise and ebb throughout the film.

For example, early on to woo Bertie back into her good graces, Lane beds a highly horny, 25-year-old, former Israeli soldier named Noa (Sivan Noam Shimon), whose six-pack would put Xena the Warrior Princess's to shame. Fred questions Lane on this odd strategy. She insists she knows what she's doing.

But does she? And why is she even trying? Or as Bertie puts it: "What the hell happened in your life that you want to come back into mine?"

If Lane's reply is acceptable, will a gleeful polyamory reign again in this household? And will Bertie start jazzing up her vocals and go on tour? And when the ladies go shopping and forget to buy ginger, can Fred still cook up his famous ginger beef for a dinner party that night?

Director Hill has noted in a recent interview: "I set out about three and half years ago wanting to write a story that would be a love story reflective of my own experiences with love and the people around me." If this beautifully-shot, engaging tale is indeed a true reflection, the expression "over the Hill" will now be seen as a major compliment.

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A Woman Missing From The World Of Words

Robert Cochrane — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 00:57:15 +0000

A Woman Missing From The World Of Words Robert Cochrane October 27, 2020 - 20:57

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Nets To Catch The Wind - Barbara Worsley-Gough (Cassell & Company, London, 1935)

A literary twilight is an unusual state of affairs akin to the value put on obscure vinyl. Certain authors continue to matter despite their work being steadfastly out of print for decades. The books when they do surface are expensive and invariably realize their asking price.

You'd imagine it would be easy to find copies of the novels of Barbara Worsley-Gough, such is her obscurity. Her two cookery books and her tome on London fashion are easily uncovered, but her nine novels remain expensive, elusive and therefore have a following or a select coterie of admirers. I can subscribe to this as I have for years scoured many a dusty shelf for her work, and therefore count myself a fan of a forgotten woman who died in 1961. From that moment her reputation became a faltering one, her volumes slipping into neglect, and as I can source no reference to her having children, there was no-one left to carry or curate the flame of her brief celebrity. It can be be co-incidence that she once more picked up her pen after the early death of her husband, though I imagine she was the kind of figure whose writing was a capricious act, rather than one burdened by any financial necessity.

Her career, and indeed there was one, splits into two distinctive strands. In the 1930s she published five novels Public Affaires, Sweet Home, A Feather In Her Cap, How To Be A Lady, and Nets To Catch The Wind, and worked as a reviewer. They are erroneously considered light and gaudy pieces of literary froth, it indeed they are considered at all. Most mentions of her cannot even add a death date to her life. She died in Purley, Surrey in 1961. It seems that her youthful output stalled from the late 1930's and the outbreak of war. Worsley-Gough married in 1932 and was five years older than her barrister husband. James Lyall Sheridan Hale, 1908-1949. She began publishing once again in the 1950s. Two detective novels Alibi Innings and Lantern Hill, the previously mentioned cookery books, the one on fashion and two novels of satiric bite The Sly Hyena and Old Father Antic. Her return marked a distinct change in her literary voice and tone. The lightness of the the 1930's was replaced with waspish, at times withering observations about human nature, a mixture of the now celebrated Barbara Pym, 1913-1980, and the yet to be rediscovered and reassessed, Kathleen Farrell, 1912-1999.

Fairly recently I picked up a battered but intact copy of Nets To Catch The Wind and put it to one side for perusal at some future date. If ever a year was one for such obligations being realised, 2020 allowed me to give Mss Worsley-Gough the full attention of a curious spin. I sensed from her 1950s books a presence I might not have altogether liked. Flinty and brittle I gleaned she would not have been the kind of woman good at putting one at one's ease. It was therefore a shock to discover kindness and an insightful nature in Nets To Catch The Wind. It possess a great understanding of the human condition, and is kindly, tolerant and benign. Her characters are flawed, but not dissected in a forensic manner, and the book reads like a pure delight. It matters not at all that there are no more modern means of communication than letters or telephones, and the story unfolds after a funeral, with the inevitable obligations and expectations such an event entails. Sam Allen has become a widower, his wife of five weeks died, and in his late twenties, she being ten years his senior, a rather bold move for a novel of the time, has become step-father to twins, the diffident but sweet Leonora and her brother, the ambitious Angus, and their younger sister by a year, Elizabeth, who is remote, intelligent, calculating and determined. Allen is committed to honouring his familial obligations to his late wife, though he is only ten years distant from her brood in age. They in turn do no wish to have a young rich step-father who looks more like a brother.

The myriad of emotions that seep out are the core and the petrol of the novel. It becomes a wise treatise on obligation, expectation and compromise. The characters are largely sympathetic, flawed but likeable and the book cuts an interesting swathe through the social structures, the snobbery and decay at the heart of 1930s London. It has a canny, and for the time, honest conclusion, an ending of a certain but uncertain happiness of sorts. From far from ideal rooming houses the reader meets disagreeable landladies, a pompous academic with wandering hands, and a blind wife, and the spoilt and rather lost John whose sense of entitlement is mirrored by his inability to harness his life. His overbearing mother is the root of much of his diffidence and the book is a wonderful cavalcade of a lost brief era that the Second World War was waiting to destroy. It is a novel of cinematic scope, and one of resigned optimism tempered by harsh reality. Since it sketches the nature of our our interior worlds, it is also strangely timeless.

Barbara Worsley-Gough is a writer ripe for rediscovery. Her pre-war efforts have a lightness of touch and possess a sense of kindly consideration. It is therefore hardly surprising that her literary second act in the 1950s was a more cutting and impatient output. Her mutation from a pretty and bright young thing, to an impression of tweedy foreboding was perhaps inevitable having witnessed two world wars. Her later books are very funny, in the way that certain forms of entertainment are best viewed from a safe distance. She remains a character waiting in the wings for a benign act of appreciation. Whilst there may be a few who might remember her, it is hoped that this small barb of a reminder might be the spark to reignite her valuable literary flame. She is a beguilingly elusive talent, but one that amuses and rewards if you happen to stumble across her on a stall or on a shelf. She really is a rather original lady in waiting.

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Voyage to Anomie

Ken Krimstein — Sun, 19 Nov 2017 13:33:06 +0000

Voyage to Anomie Ken Krimstein November 19, 2017 - 08:33

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Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It

Some people find travel broadening. Some people travel to relax and get away from it all. When Geoff Dyer travels, the world is like a million hammers, pounding him into himself, creating a strange and wonderful hall of mirrors that, while it can be trying -- even depressing -- is strangely exhilarating. That's the basic story and feel of Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It, Dyer's irrepressible but annoying memoir/travelogue, published in 2003.

Dyer is a thinker/writer. Thankfully, he has a comic's touch; sometimes he can be very funny indeed. Most of the humor comes out of the situations he, pathetic geek that he is, puts himself in. There are a couple of "jokes" which ring out discordantly, but overall, the humor is organic and tinged with some pretty deep, pretty depressing thinking. Nietzsche on the borscht belt. The chapters, culled from various essays, articles, web-forays, and a lifetime of scribbling, make a tapestry -- a soggy tapestry, but a pretty one nevertheless. That's because most of the time Dyer's traveling, the skies open up on him.

Even in Libya, smack in the Sahara desert, the skies open on him. In Detroit, he's so depressed he thinks the torrents have moved from outside the diner window to inside it as well -- until he discovers those drops on his eggs are his own tears. The venues, and characters, are amusing. Several psychos push Dyer into his melancholy: a vaguely homicidal drug addict in New Orleans, a supremely creepy if somewhat clichéd tour guide behind dark glasses. The tour jaunts through rave-ups in places as disparate as the tropical islands off Thailand and the urban decay of Detroit. Along the way he tries to enjoy Van Gogh paintings, muses on Russian art films (Tarkovsky's Stalker), melts into nothingness under the blazing Roman heat of August, quotes and knowingly misquotes poets and philosophers, and all the while tries to find a decent hotel. (He is, after all, a Brit -- and nobody does "oh, the indignity of traveling abroad" like the Brit travel writers). It's all in good fun, if digging yourself into a deep purple funk is your idea of fun.

All in all, Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It is a book about nothing that is at once impossibly annoying to read and impossible to put down. It's like Seinfeld in slow motion, without Kramer, on drugs. If that sounds like your cup of tea (or bowl of it?), give it a try. As for me, it makes me very curious to read some of Mr. Dyer's other forays, notably his studies on Lawrence, jazz, and the First World War. And it also makes me look forward to his upcoming tome, addressing his obsessions with photography.

'Til next time...

Restaging Love with a Hustler

Brandon Judell — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 02:33:40 +0000

Restaging Love with a Hustler Brandon Judell January 15, 2017 - 21:33

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One can only hope director Nick Corporon's shorts (I've seen two) and his feature debut, Retake, are not autobiographical. All of his male characters are semi-despondent romantics. They find true love, lose true love, or are confronted by a world ready to quash them if they don't assume heteronormative stances or watch Vin Diesel films .

In the poignantly wise, 13-minute "Barbie Boy" (2014), seven-year-old Bobby (Trent Carlton) learns from his dad that boys don't play with Barbie and Ken dolls in public or nearly anywhere else. It doesn't even matter if Bobby just allows the plastic couple to scuba dive in the kitchen sink, smooch in their Dream House, or go out for lattés; the testosterone-fueled world will frown on such carryings-on and possibly do worse than frown. So will the blond-tressed lad stand up to societal pressure and grow up to be Alexander Mc Queen? Or will the little chap hang his head low and ask Mom for the squat, sexless Motorized Attack Robo Squad robot as a substitute for Ken the next time they are in Toys"R"Us? Here's a must-see starter for any genderqueer discussion.

For those in the mood for a male-on-male Twilight Zone entertainment, "Last Call" (2009) will fill the bill. The alcoholic Gavin (the easy-on-the-eye Travis Dixon) has just died in a car crash, but doesn't know it. Instead, he finds himself in a pub that he can't leave. When he tries to exit, he winds up reentering the establishment. Can the bartender (a solid Jody Jaress), who might just be the Keeper of the Pearly Gates, make sense of what's going on?

Lining up a bunch of filled shot glasses, she states that each gulp Galvin takes will bring back a memory. He immediately starts imbibing, and as she said, with each swallow, a chunk of his past reappears.

Flashback time: the hunk discovers he once had a lover (David Devora) who played the guitar. Between tunes, the pair was getting ready to adopt a child, but Gavin, afraid of responsibility, became incapacitated yet again, and left the one person who cared for him. Kerbang! Bye, bye to life, auto, and diapers. But is there a future after death?

Made for a trifle, the 17-minute-long "Last Call" is an ambitious, early work that displays Corporon's intriguing talent in an unpolished manner. A bit excessive in spots, but worthy of a quick gander online.

Now comes the helmer's full-length debut, Retake, a totally uncynical look at the insanity of love and its accompanying sadness in the new millennium. Corporon's sort of the anti-Woody Allen. Imagine Annie Hall with no witticisms.

Astutely cast and well directed, here's the tale of the middle-aged Jonathan (Tuc Watkins of Desperate Housewives and One Life to Live). He's a stick-in-the-mud type of guy who goes to San Francisco yearly to pick up a hustler to roleplay a chap named "Brandon." For a sum, the chosen streetwalker has to wear a special wig, spritz himself with a certain cologne, smoke cigarettes, and be a bottom.

The first hustler Jonathan chooses doesn't quite work out. However, his second (Devon Graye, possibly best known as the teenage Dexter) is a near perfect fit. His reward: an all-expense paid trip to the Grand Canyon with Jonathan, as long as he keeps up his new alter ego.

Jonathan: "What are your plans the next few days?"

Hustler: "Why?"

Jonathan: "I thought I might keep you around for a while."

Hustler: "That's definitely more than blowjobs and ass-play. That's like talking and shit. Personal stuff."

Jonathan: "I'll double your nightly rate. Give you $500 extra at the end."

So what we've got here is quite a pair: a pouting grump trying to re-experience the passion he once felt for a long lost inamorato, plus a young man, who's been thrown out on the street for being gay by his "Bible-beating" kin and is now playacting someone who is adored. Will the two connect? Eventually. But will they live happily together forever? Anyone who's seen the final minutes of "Barbie Boy" knows Corporon will strive for an unexpectedly honest finale.

Yes, in the end, especially due to Graye's superbly buoyant, multilayered performance, here's a road movie that could and should break your heart. There are several factors, though, that prevent Retake from totally taking you on that ride.

Firstly, there's the character of the dour-yet-well-built Jonathan. Now I don't know about you, but if I were a hustler, and this gent took me up to his hotel room, had me put on a cheap wig and squirt myself with some scent from Macy's, and then barked, "If I ask you to do something, do it!" I'm not sure I'd hop into his car right away to view an abyss in Arizona. Then when "Brandon" asks his john some personal questions, the young man gets the following kindly response: "I'm paying you. You should show me some respect."

Is Jonathan a repressed nut job? Happily not, but he might have the more cautious boytoy running for the hills.

Secondly, there's Stacy Schneiderman, the key hair stylist for the film. This young woman has come up with one of the more craptacular hairpieces in modern American indie cinema for Mr. Graye. These tresses are so off-putting, that for the first 36 minutes, you can hardly concentrate on the actor's fine performance. You keep staring at his hairline and asking yourself, "What is it? Will it bite? Will it get up and walk off the set by itself?" However, after "Brandon" gives himself a haircut, you can relax and focus back on the couple as they near the Grand Canyon.

Bouffants aside, Retake, a superb film for depressives seeking images of themselves on-screen, is an interesting addition to the representation of male prostitution in film, one that makes Midnight Cowboy seem like a Marx Brothers offering. (For a thorough exploration of this topic, check out the chapter on cinema in the engaging Male Sex Work and Society, edited by Victor Minichiello and John Scott.)

Here you have two folks trying to break out of the parameters that first brought them together. As a john, can you ever surmise that the affection you are receiving from a paid escort is genuine? And if you are a hustler, can you ever convince your buyer and yourself that you're a genuine, trustworthy soul who's willing to forgo remuneration for a chance at having your heartstrings tugged at? For minutes at a time you can. Those pre- and post-orgasm hazes are dream makers. But once the cleanup tissues are in the can, reality sets in.

And the reality here is that while Retake will probably fail to attract much of an audience, Corporon is still a real find, even though he could benefit from some Xanax. I write that now because I'm reading his press notes and discovering the film is autobiographical to a great degree.

From the filmmaker's statement: "My longest relationship was three years long. The first year was great and we spent the last two years trying to get back to what we had in the first. As soon as it was over, I went to that weird, nasty place we human creatures can go into after a breakup. I sought to replace him with an exact copy."

Well, if Corporon's life doesn't pick up, he can always become America's Terence Davies, Britain's master of forlorness.

Music and Sex #11: Music, Music, and More Music

Roman Akleff — Mon, 06 Jun 2016 05:25:45 +0000

Music and Sex #11: Music, Music, and More Music Roman Akleff June 6, 2016 - 01:25

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Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress (first chapter here).

Walter had been so busy with midterms that he hadn't gone record-shopping recently. Neither had he spent his income on anything else, other than eating on the weekends, though he'd eaten better than usual. He'd wandered into a fast-food place on Broadway called Amy's and, for the first time in his life, had tried a falafel sandwich. Well, not really a sandwich, at least not as he thought of a sandwich, which was (mostly) meat between two separate pieces of bread, but he didn't know what else to call these things stuffed into pita bread. He'd liked it, not least because just one sandwich was very filling, so he had gone back regularly for lunch on weekends. It was a nice change of pace from the food at John Jay cafeteria. There never seemed to be many customers, though.

On the Saturday afternoon following midterms, after lunch at Amy's he hurried across Broadway to Record Discount. He knew there was a new Elvis Costello album, Get Happy, which had somehow squeezed a whopping twenty songs onto one LP. He grabbed a copy immediately, then began browsing. There was a Daryl Hall solo album; that was a surprise. And there was the Pretenders album from early in the year; he'd wanted that for a while. Wow, there was a new Cure album! Wait, no, not really. Most of the tracks were on the LP with the refrigerator on the cover, which he'd already taped from Garrick's copy. Skip. Looking at the new Warren Zevon, he saw there was a track co-written with Springsteen. He toyed with also getting the new Heart album, but hadn't heard any of the songs on the radio. Four LPs was enough.

Back in his dorm room, he was most curious about the Daryl Hall album, Sacred Songs, which he hadn't heard anything about. The first few tracks sounded like Hall & Oates when they played rock, but "Babs and Babs" got a little weird with a strange electronic section of looping guitars in the middle that returned to take over the end of the song. After that came "Urban Landscape," a whole track of similarly electronic music with no vocal, and Walter was finally inspired to read the album credits. Robert Fripp was both the guitarist on these tracks and the producer of the album. The last track on the first side, "NYCNY," was also new-sounding, with Hall's voice very reverberant, harsh guitar, a pummeling rhythm, swirling synthesizer, and this weird sense at times that the instrumental parts were of different lengths and meters circling around each other but working out evenly at regular intervals. He'd never heard anything like it!

Flipping the album over, the mood changed completely. "The Farther Away I Am" started with quiet tones: Fender Rhodes chords and a gently insinuating Fripp drone over which Hall eventually began repeating "the farther away I am, is it just a cloud passing under? I don't wanna lose you," and then just "lose you," leading into an entirely Fripp section that soon faded. Though the song that followed was basically a pop song that would have fit on any mid-'70s Hall & Oates LP, it fit the mood that had been set. The mastery of Hall's singing was apparent in how he quietly floated a high note at the end of each verse. The tempo increased for "Don't Leave Me Alone with Her," with Fripp playing a funky guitar riff that turned into a kind of eccentrically mechanistic solo. Later the song built momentum, or seemed to (the tempo had stayed exactly the same as the textures thickened and piano was pounded; there was a fade-out, and then the music faded back in on the same emphatic outro. As it extended into the sixth minute, the beat got a little more complex, disco-ish but with more of that feeling of shifting multiple meters. "Survive" was a beautiful ballad, but with saw-toothed Fripp guitar undercutting the mood on the first verse. Fripp's tone became mellower, with rich chords, for the following verse. A rollicking bridge interrupted after two minutes, then gave way to the more tense next verse. Then it was back to the bridge, except could it really be called a bridge when it took over the next three minutes and ended the song? Another beautiful ballad, "Without Tears," closed the album in stripped-down fashion, starting as just voice and piano before billowing guitar loops came in at the end of the verse -- and that was it as far as instruments; nobody else joined in.

Walter never played a record more than once every twenty-four hours, since he'd read that the friction of the needle moving through the grooves heated them enough that they were soft afterwards and, if not allowed to cool down before the next playing, any dust in the grooves would become embedded forever. For the next week, Sacred Songs got played once a day, before he gradually checked out his other new acquisitions, and Fripp went on Walter's mental list of artists to look for on used-LP shopping expeditions. One time when he was playing Sacred Songs, Marcus overheard and came in. "Is this the Daryl Hall album with Fripp?"

"Yes."

"Thought so -- I'd know that guitar sound anywhere." Marcus then wandered over to Walter's closet where, as he knew, Walter's LPs sat on the shelf.

After a minute, he announced, "Vinyl, I'm surprised you don't have any King Crimson. Shocked, even."

Why was Marcus saying this about the band whose album gatefold was painted on the wall across from the elevators. Best to be non-committal. "If I ever see any cheap downtown..."

"It's just funny you'd get this before anything else Fripp's on."

Oh, so that's why he said that. "Well, I like Hall, so when I saw it at Record Discount..."

Marcus didn't respond, but he did sit in Carl's extra chair and listen to the end of the album ten minutes later. Walter silently added King Crimson to that mental list.

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The music department was always getting free tickets for concerts by obscure performers -- especially pianists, for some reason. The department secretary would occasionally push one on him; this week there was a Thursday evening piano recital at the 92nd Street Y by a Chinese pianist Walter had never heard of. With a Music Hum. homework assignment to review a concert looming over his head, Walter took the proffered ticket.

At the Y, he could tell why the venue had resorted to giving away tickets: the attendance was embarrassingly sparse. He wondered if anybody had actually paid to get in, or paid full price, since he'd seen that the Y's senior citizen discount was huge. After he'd heard the performance, he hoped nobody had wasted their money getting in. His concert review combined a paraphrased rehash of the program notes with his opinions what he considered to be the often misguided interpretations on display.

Haydn's Piano Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI:50, dates from 1894, near the end of his career, one of three written in London for Therese Jansen, an English student of Muzio Clementi. It was also written for the English style of piano, which had more notes than the Viennese models Haydn was used to. It is in three movements in the familiar fast-slow-fast design. The first movement is one of Haydn's monothematic sonata-allegro creations, but he finds much variety in his permutations of aspects of the theme. The development section somewhat daringly begins not in major but rather C minor, then wends its way through A-flat major and A minor before returning to C major. The Adagio, in F major, was written before the other movements were conceived. The finale is short and witty.

The pianist, Fang Long, was technically impressive, achieving clarity without sacrificing legato. The norm in Haydn pianism in recent years has tended towards minimal use of the sustain pedal, but Long went the opposite direction, at times even blurring the harmony with downright Impressionist pedaling. While this made for great textural contrasts, they were so startling as to be distracting. In the slow second movement, Long indulged in lots of rubato, which also seemed anachronistic. However, during a passage of parallel octaves in the right hand, it was impossible not to be impressed by how Long's detaché rendering exhibited perfectly balanced touch, with never an over- or under-accented note. In the eccentric finale, in which Haydn uses seemingly deliberately out-of-place harmonies (by the standards of 1794, when it was written) in an otherwise straightforward minuet, there are also pauses that portray imagined dancers' halting reactions to these intrusions, and Long played up the humor of these pauses in dramatic fashion. This too seemed exaggerated compared to more standard performances, though at least here there was programmatic justification.

Brahms's Seven Fantasias, Op. 116, date from the last decade of the composer's life, the first of four groups of solo pieces that crowned his piano writing. The individual pieces are of differing forms: three Capriccios, which are faster than the more contemplative four Intermezzos. At first I liked the big tone and Romantic gestures of Fang's Brahms's, which seemed spontaneous. Then, after a while, the fact that he never passed up a chance for a dramatic rubato or other effects began to wear me down. Maybe it is unfair to consider these great pieces to be miniatures, but his interpretation over-inflated them, in my opinion. He did get my attention back with the more effective dynamic outbursts of the closing Capriccio.

Chopin's Andante spianato & Grand Polonaise Brillante in E-flat major, Op. 22 started with the Polonaise as a separate piece for piano and orchestra (1831); in 1834 the composer added the Andante. Nowadays it is most often heard as a solo piano piece. The Polonaise is a Polish dance. Though there was much to enjoy in this performance, the out-of-tune upper register of the piano was distracting at times. After Fang was note-perfect in the first half of the program, in the Chopin I noticed several fumbles, though he was still operating at a very high level. I probably would have liked his Chopin playing more if I'd heard it separately; on its own his interventionist interpretation could have struck me as fresh and appropriate, but I'd sort of soured on him by this point in the program.

Professor Hatch as usual gave Walter an A, but wrote at the end, "For this assignment in this class, this is excellent work, but in the future, you might want to make the informal tone of your writing more academic."

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On March 21st, the birthday of his hero Johann Sebastian Bach, Walter had a habit of listening only to his music. After his return from his German class -- where he had mentioned the occasion, to Fraulein Rilke's approval of both the cultural allusion and his correct vocabulary and grammar -- he pulled his first choice off the shelf: Hermann Scherchen's recording, on ABC, of the B Minor Mass. It had been purchased because it was more inexpensive than the other choices, but it was a perfectly acceptable rendition and Walter was quite fond of it. After the stentorian choral opening, the cool tone of the flutes was balm to his soul, and the lengthy fugue a familiar aural stimulant of his musical intellect. He hoped that someday he would be able to participate in a performance. He also felt, as so often on hearing this music, that he should write a Mass setting himself, despite never having celebrated one.

Then came the lightly dancing duet of the soprano and alto. Oh, he could imagine it being lighter and dancier than Scherchen made it, especially in the violins' phrasing, but he could hear its potential there, and that sufficed. Then the choir came back in with another setting of the Kyrie text, the sections chasing each other.

The trumpets of the Gloria were inherently celebratory, the music's rhythmic breathe creating a swirl of exhilaration. In terra pax contrasted so well with it. Really the whole work was a brilliant series of contrasting textures. But the best part was the Gratias; such a wonderful climbing theme, and whenever the trumpets bolstered the sopranos, he got goosebumps. And, as he knew from years of listening, he would get to experience it again as the glorious conclusion of the entire piece. He had enough free time to listen all the way to it. Then he went to lunch.

He sat at a table of musician friends and immediately mentioned Bach's birthday. "So, are you having a party for him tonight?" asked Steve Grossman #2, a saxophonist -- with #2 appended to his name in recognition of the saxophonist of the same name who played with Miles Davis in the mid-'70s -- in the marching band who was on break from working behind the John Jay serving counter. "I should," answered Walter. "That's a good idea. So yes! My room at 8 PM."

"You know how to party on a Friday night," responded Rebel Dave, a clarinetist from Georgia, with sarcasm dripping from his tone.

"I'd invite you, but I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself crossing the street," Walter retorted, referring to a notorious incident the previous semester when Dave had tripped on the curb while inebriated and fallen straight forward onto his face, breaking his nose. After seeing Dave blush bright red, Walter felt slightly bad. "Just kidding, you're invited. You'll be okay, you'll only have to take the elevator." (Dave also lived in Carman.)

Walter got to the Music Hum. classroom before Professor Hatch arrived, so he had a chance to talk to Rachel then. "I'm having a birthday party for Bach tonight, would you like to come?" "Oh, that's cute, but I've already got plans." But Maria Maltana, sitting in front of them, heard and interjected, "That sounds like fun, can I come?" Walter smiled. "8 o'clock in 1013 Carman." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rachel frown slightly. What, she was jealous? Interesting. He wondered how this might affect future lessons: would they end, or would she just be colder -- or would they get hotter as she competed?

Eight p.m. came and Steve arrived, bringing a box of Entenmann's cupcakes and a candle, which was a nice touch. Carl had enthusiastically greeted Walter's party announcement and stayed. Walter put on Harnoncourt's roughly exciting Brandenburg concertos -- he deliberately avoided religious music for Steve's sake -- and they sat quietly. Maria didn't show up, which disappointed him, nor did Dave, which was fine -- Walter wasn't sure Dave could sit quietly. After the first concerto was over, Carl spoke up. "Do you have the cello suites?" Of course a cellist would want to hear those. "Yes," Walter responded, taking Henri Honneger's box set on Das Alte Werk down and handing it to Carl, whose eyes lit up. "I just want to hear the first one, do you mind?" "No, that's the best one, especially the first movement." Carl nodded affirmatively, and Walter played it. At the end, Steve stuck the candle in one of the cupcakes and asked, "Does anybody have a match?" Since they were all non-smokers, they did not. Walter shrugged and started singing: "Happy birthday to Yo, happy birthday to Yo, happy birthday dear Johann, happy birthday to Yo." Carl joined enthusiastically, Steve somewhat half-heartedly. When they were done, Walter mimed blowing out the candle. He flipped over the record to the sixth cello suite and they ate the cupcakes -- two each, since nobody else had shown up -- and then Steve went home. Walter and Carl listened to the rest of the cello suites, then called it a night.

Roman AkLeff says of Music and Sex, his third attempt at a novel: "Lots of the events depicted in this book happened, to varying degrees. Some should have happened but didn't until now. Though it's mostly set in the 20th century, Music and Sex aspires to be a Bildungsroman for 21st century sensibilities, in that the main character doesn't finish coming of age until he is several decades into adulthood."

There Is a God in Celluloid Heaven!

Brandon Judell — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 15:02:43 +0000

There Is a God in Celluloid Heaven! Brandon Judell June 8, 2015 - 11:02

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Film Review

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fiction

You could be vaccinating felines for a year at an animal shelter and still not hear the word "pussy" as much as you do in the first half hour of Entourage. This expansion of the HBO TV series appears to have been conceived by a gaggle of misogynistic, beer-chugging adolescent virgins who brag about getting laid, but the closest they've ever gotten is a Playboy centerfold bespattered with cream of mushroom soup that they rescued from the city dump.

To be fair, I have never viewed any episode of this series that I thought was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek inside gander at Hollywood. Instead, what we have here is a glorified daydream of the male need to copulate with any orifice within five inches of his zipper. Make that four inches.

Directed and written with unflinching ineptitude and fetid taste by the series' executive producer Doug Ellin, the film is basically plotless. Vince (Adrian Grenier), a pretty boy superstar discovered in a Mentos commercial by super-agent-turned-studio-head Ari Gold (a one-note Jeremy Piven), is now given the chance to act in and direct a $100 million motion picture even though he's had no previous experience behind the camera--and before the camera he's no Ian McKellen.

Of course, the lad goes over-budget, which jeopardizes both his and Ari's careers. Meanwhile, his hangers-on -- the boys from the borough of Queens -- do little more than palpitate over mammary glands and well-rounded arses that apparently have overrun Los Angeles.

Kevin Dillon plays Vince's sibling, Johnny Drama, a character apparently based upon himself: a talentless, less attractive brother of a well-known actor (Matt Dillon) who desires to be a respected thespian. In the film, Johnny eventually receives that acclaim. In real life, based upon this performance, Dillon never will. Even his breathing seems overdone. Drama's supposed highlight moment here is when a video of himself slapping his salami goes viral. This is supposed to be extremely amusing. It isn't.

Worse is the dramatic arc for Eric (Kevin Connolly), a pizza maker turned Vince's manager. He has unprotected sex with two damsels in one day while his ex-girlfriend is just about to give birth, and she knowingly takes him back. How desperate does Ellin think West Coast women are to behave in such a manner? Sue the bastard for child support, girl, and find a man whose brains aren't shoved into his one-eyed trouser snake.

Film historian Jeanine Basinger notes in A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960 that "no one has ever seriously questioned the idea that Hollywood has ever had only one real reason for making movies--to generate profits. There has been no other organized agenda, hidden or otherwise. If certain individuals have had ideas or beliefs or political persuasions that were important to their artistic visions, they had to find a way to steer them past a large committee of executives, writers, designers, producers, actors, and other people. That some could do this was a tribute to their strength of character, determination, talent, and perseverance." Clearly, these are all traits that Ellin, who also wrote and directed Phat Beach (1996), lacks.

As The Washington Post's Richard Harrington noted of that early effort to cash in on the African-American youth culture, "Phat Beach looks all too often like the kind of black film so wickedly parodied in Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle. . . . It's weakly plotted, badly filmed, terribly acted. It's low-phat."

"It's weakly plotted, badly filmed, terribly acted. It's low-phat" is a critique that fits Entourage like a custom designed condom, which is sad because biting yet loving comedies about the film industry have so often worked before. Robert Altman's The Player, François Truffaut's Night for Day, and Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, for example. All these boasted wisdom and artistry. These film's directors had a vision where Ellin has a cash register.

Entourage, in the end, is an unfunny schlong-a-thon fashioned by a crude purveyor of infantile sexual impulses and a fear of formidable, astute women.

Music and Sex #2 - in which our hero is taken down a peg but his weekend is saved by rock 'n' roll

Roman Akleff — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 16:03:57 +0000

Music and Sex #2 - in which our hero is taken down a peg but his weekend is saved by rock 'n' roll Roman Akleff January 8, 2015 - 11:03

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Literary Review

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fiction

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress (first chapter here)

Walter's biggest adjustment to college life was realizing that he wasn't the hot-shit intellectual he'd thought he was. In high school he hadn't been the smartest guy, but he'd felt like he was up there in at least the top five percent. Here he felt like an idiot at times. Senior year in high school he'd officially been the best player on the chess team, and moreover, first board on the first-place team in their league that year. At Columbia, he lost 24 consecutive speed games to one guy and never managed better than a draw with anybody in the chess club before, feeling frustrated and embarrassed, he stopped attending meetings.

He couldn't stop attending classes, though. In the only one he was taking that wasn't just for freshman, Political Theory, he humiliated himself during a discussion of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. He hadn't finished the assigned reading but, buoyed by false confidence born of years of being able to bullshit his way through discussions, debates, and arguments, even with some teachers. So he tried to participate, but was so definitively shown to be not just wrong, but ignorant, that he didn't voluntarily open his mouth in that class again.

Even in music he couldn't always hold his own. One morning as he was leaving the piano practice room he'd signed up for, another student waiting outside it asked him, "Can you improvise a blues?" Walter said he thought he could; the guy asked to hear him do so; and then interrupted before Walter was halfway through his first chorus: "No, I meant a jazz blues."

"What's the difference?" Walter asked naïvely.

"Like this," his antagonist said, taking over the piano bench and zipping through a complex chord progression full of ninth chords that changed much more frequently than the 12-bar blues Walter knew on a rudimentary level. Anticipating Walter's question, or maybe just reacting to the confusion on his face, the guy explained, "Those are chord substitutions. Every jazz player knows them."

Feeling thoroughly worthless, Walter turned and exited without a word. After that, he began to fear humiliation in every interaction.

At least he didn't have to worry too much about it in the only music course he had signed up for. It turned out that Music Humanities was geared towards non-musicians, a sort of combination of music appreciation and the history of Western classical music. Despite – or because – of this, Walter enjoyed it. The professor, a short, wizened man named Christopher Hatch, was funny but astute, playing examples from LPs and pointing out interesting details or cracking little jokes.

Walter and Music Hum intersected again after he answered a listing on the job board and got hired to man the listening library two evenings a week for four-hour shifts. It was the easiest job he'd ever had, because very few students came in to do their listening assignments. It was a s though he were getting paid to do his reading assignments, since that's what he spend most of those eight hours doing. Sometimes a person or two would show up, but once Walter had handed over their request vinyl and they'd put their headphones on, quiet reigned again, except when two guys (it was almost always guys, since it was a class at all-male Columbia College, though students in other undergrad schools at Columbia University – Engineering, Barnard, General Studies – occasionally signed up for it) were studying together, which meant two guys with headphones yelling at each other because they had no idea how loud they were as they talked over the music in their headphones – music which was unheard in the room except for its barely audible presentation directly from the needle to the air. If there were other people in the room aside from the talkers, Walter would have to tape the talkers on the shoulder and let them know to be quieter, though that rarely worked for long. Comical the first time, this situation quickly became the most – well, only – annoying part of the job.

And the money was nice. His parents, especially his mother, had assumed he'd be home on weekends, so he'd been signed up for just the weekday meal plan. Walter, however, had quickly succumbed to the charms of the city. Staying in Manhattan on weekends was certainly more exciting and culturally stimulating than going home to Long Island, but eating on weekends cost money.

He could have eaten just fine on the $45 per week he got from the library job, but he was constantly tempted to spend most of it on music. The weekend of September 21, he stayed on campus to see Lou Reed that Friday night at McMillan Theater and then most of the so-called No Nukes concerts Saturday and Sunday.

Walter had bought his pair of Reed tickets rather late in the game, so he and his high school friend Norman, who came in for the weekend, were seated up in the balcony so far over on the right that much of stage left was blocked from their view. No matter; Lou was front and center almost the entire time, bantering with the audience, throwing mikes and mike stands around with abandon, pretending to shoot heroin during, of course, "Heroin," and letting a young blonde bury her head in his crotch as he sat on the edge of the stage. The band, largely the same as on The Bells, was loose in a good way; they had to vamp a lot while Lou did his jokey shtick. The darkness that dominated The Bell, its sonic murkiness, was greatly lessened in concert, but not so much that Bells songs – only two – didn't have the same effect, though the title track of Street Hassle was pretty different with synthesizer instead of cello – and with the audience clapping along, a little odd given that it's an account of death by overdose.

The classic material -- the show started with "Sweet Jane" and ended with "Rock n Roll" (with "You Keep Me Hangin' On" interpolated) and "Heroin" -- lacked the power and bombast of the versions on Rock n Roll Animal that, heard on the radio, had introduced Walter to those songs; neither did they have the edgy tension of the original Velvet Underground versions. But that didn't keep the show from being exciting, with a strong communal feeling of musical solidarity. A bunch of songs in the middle were unfamiliar to Walter; Norman said they were mostly from Berlin, which he described as "the most depressing album I've ever heard, but I like it." Walter made a mental note to look for that LP. The closing "Heroin" was very downbeat, and there was no encore.

Next installment here.

Roman AkLeff says of Music and Sex, his third attempt at a novel: "Lots of the events to be depicted in this book happened, to varying degrees. Some of it should have happened but didn't until now. Though it's mostly set in the 20th century, Music and Sex aspires to be a Bildungsroman for 21st century sensibilities, in that the main character doesn't finish coming of age until he is several decades into adulthood."