Jack DeJohnette, RIP

He made much great music. This one is kind of a fusion version of speed metal. I have it on vinyl. Generally not my thing, but wow.

Reading roundup

The Hours
Michael Cunningham

A riff on Mrs. Dalloway, with its themes of madness, beauty, sexuality, and choosing between living and death, it is a fine novel, loaded with clever parallels and references to the original that only occasionally distract or become too contrived. 

James
Percival Everett

Having read about the novel, I was little worried that it would be too didactic or woke for my tastes, but in fact it is primarily a rollicking good adventure yarn, and in that regard not unlike its inspiration / foil Huckleberry Finn. Everett has serious fun with Jim's code-switching when speaking with his peers versus the white folks, if on occasion he is inclined to explain rather than show. Although the evils of enslavement, and its corruption of all levels of American society, are on display here, Everett's depictions never rise to the level of eloquence or horror of, say, Beloved, or The Known World. And in the end, in light of the plot's central revelation, what the f*** has become of Huck? I guess that question is left to the late Mr. Clemens to answer. This is not Huck's story, after all.

Desolation Island
The Far Side of the World
Patrick O'Brian

Ahoy mateys! I'd read a couple of his books before, and I was happy to return for more. Yes, they follow a formula. Yes, there are only so many things that can happen, so they keep happening, book after book: storms, doldrums, shipwrecks, battles at sea, floggings, scurvy. And yes, you have to make a choice between keeping Wikipedia close to hand so you can translate all the nautical jargon, or just blow through it like a westerly in the South Atlantic, counting on context and the pure music of the words. Anyway, our heroes Aubrey and Maturin are so compelling, the storytelling so gripping, the writing so facile, the moral sensibility so empathetic if traditional, you welcome yet another chase across the high seas, whether Aubrey is the hunter or the quarry. Call it science fiction: You are dropped right onto an alien spacecraft, with its own peculiar technology, language, culture, and rules. But better than most science fiction: Informed by historical and physical reality, and written by a master prose stylist.

D'Angelo, RIP

Some of the best-sounding music ever made. Way too young.