Sweeter Than Fiction

 

When I finished Mark Lindquist's Sad Movies I wanted to read Jay McInerney's somewhat similar but much more famous Bright Lights, Big City. Only I couldn't find my copy. 

Not that I really looked. I thought I remembered where it was but it wasn't there so I gave up. That's not really looking, is it? 

I did find Brett Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero, arguably the best-remembered of all the first-wave bratpack novels. I remember where I got it or at least I think I remember. I was at a party at a squat in Bristol sometime in the mid-80s and it was lying around and I made some comment on it and the guy whose party it was said something bad about it (the book, not the party) and told me I could take it so I did.

At least that's a story I tell myself. I see now the copy I have has a rail ticket inside it dated 1993. It's for a trip from where I live now to where I was working then. I was obviously using it as a bookmark. I doubt it's the same book I took from that party although I guess it could be.

That must have been the last time I read Less Than Zero: 1993. Almost thirty years ago. Probably about time I read it again. 

I almost did. I picked it up and thought about it but then I had a better idea.

I have more books by Mark Lindquist. Why not read one of those? 

He hasn't written many. Just four. He's working on a fifth. I've read three of them, Sad Movies, which started all this (this won't be the last of it), The King of Methlehem (which I gave to my stepdaughter for her birthday and haven't heard what she thought yet) and the one I decided to read next, Never Mind Nirvana.

The reason Lindquist has only managed four books in thirty-five years is he has a real job. He's a lawyer. These days he's in private practice but for over twenty years he was a federal prosecutor.

There's a lot of detail about his law-enfocement career at that link. More than I care to know. The only thing that interests me about it is how his life has influenced his work. Which is, I think, a lot.

When he was writing Sad Movies, or just before, Lindquist lived in L.A. and worked as copy writer for a movie studio, the same job Zeke has in the novel. His second novel, Carnival Desires, (the one I haven't read yet) "chronicled his Hollywood years when he was working as a screenwriter, script doctor, book reviewer, and general freelance writer."

I got that from his other website, the one where he's an author, not a lawyer. (See? He has two websites so he can keep the different parts of his life and interests separate. Don't you wish I did? Yeah, well, so do I sometimes. Other times I don't. We've talked about this before. I imagine we will again.)

In the early '90s Lindquist moved back to the Pacific north-west, where he grew up. Good timing. Grunge was peaking, or maybe had peaked. Seattle was the hippest city on the planet for a while and that was the while.

Mark (I never know what to call writers or musicians when I'm writing about them. First off, you use all of their name and then you use the last name and then you use the first name. I get that but as you keep on you kind of want to settle on something and "last name" starts to seem brusque but "first name" seems over-familiar, presumptious, and the two together just makes you sound like someone's mother. There's probably a journalistic convention about it. I should look it up. And then not follow it.) was at law school but from his third novel, Never Mind Nirvana, I'm betting he spent a lot of time in clubs.

The protagonist of NMN (abbreviates so nicely) is 36 ("almost forty"), works as a prosecutor and used to be lead singer in a band called Morph. They were on the scene, made one album, split up. Now it's the late '90s. Thereabouts.

As far as I know Mark (gonna stick with "Mark") was never in a band or at least not one than made any records. This is interesting. In all the novels of his I've read (that's three) it's the only one where the main character seems to be an almagam of who the author has been and who he'd have liked to have been. 

In all the others (still just three but I'm betting it would be the same in the one I haven't read yet) the central figure is clearly drawn from life: the author's life. This opens a whole can of questions that get asked in every first year lit course and never get answered to anyone's satisfaction. I've nearly come to blows over this in the past. 

It's more than just an academic argument. There's that whole legal disclaimer thing you get in the front of every book. The one where any similarity between characters and events is deemed entirely co-incidental. That one.

Except you don't get it in every book. I just looked in the front of Less Than Zero and it's not there. It's not in Jay McInerney's Brightness Falls, either. (I can find that one. Still can't find Bright Lights, Big City and this time I did look properly.)

It is in the front of Never Mind Nirvana, though, along with a dedication, something else you almost always find at the front of a book. They're on opposite pages.

I read dedications. I rarely remember them. They're usually to people the author knows that the readers don't and don't expect to. As a reader, I didn't expect to get to know Kim Warnick so it was quite a surprise when she turned up as a character on page 54.

I guess that's what "used fictionally" means.  Although how fantastic would it be if the author had actually dedicated a book to one of the wholly fictional characters in it? All the fantastic, that's how fantastic.

It's just as well I decided to base my Mark Lindquist playlist on Sad Movies, by the way. I'm only just over fifty pages into NMN and he's already namechecked more bands and songs than in the whole of his first novel. Which, I guess, is only fair. It is about music and musicians after all. 

Several of the artists and even a few of the songs are the same ones he mentions in Sad Movies, too. The same The The song (although a typo in my edition, a paperback first, misses out one of the Thes so its just The. You can see how that happened.) The same U2 song. The same Replacements album. Psychocandy.

There are also plenty of names of bands I've never heard of. It's impossible to tell whether they're real or made up. When I first read Never Mind Nirvana I typed a bunch of the names into YouTube to see if anything came up. Naturally I can't remember if anything did so I've just done it again.

I thought Murder City Devils would be real. They are. Tight Bros From Way Back When I was pretty sure wouldn't. They are. Flop, I was all but sure would be made up. They were a bit harder to find but... yeah, they're real too. 

 

Probably every band mentioned that isn't Morph or the band whose guitarist Pete prosecutes for sexual assault is real. Hey, though, what even is reality anyway? And what is fiction?

It was only yesterday that I realized my copy of Never Mind Nirvana is signed by the author. I bought it online, used, because if it was ever in print in the U.K. it isn't now. My copy came from America and I noticed when I opened it there was a big, handwritten dedication to someone called Keri Costello. 

I love to get books that have been written in. Not written on, obviously. Just where someone has given a present and added a note or where they've been so inspired or incensed by what the author's got to say they've scribbled in the margin. I also love it when people leave old bus tickets or postcards they've used as bookmarks. I made a collage of those, once.

It was probably only because I'd written the playlist post and had Mark Lindquist's name firmly in my head that I finally spotted that flattened signature was his. It's obvious once you know.

I'd thought whoever gave the book to whomever used to own it wrote it and maybe it they did. Maybe that was Mark. It does sound as if he knows whoever he's dedicating it to, doesn't it? But then, some authors are really good at that sort of thing.

 

Tama Janowitz, another bratpacker, was. Probably still is. I could tell my Tama Janowitz story here but it makes me sad so I won't. It's not a personal story. Just something about a book I nearly bought then didn't. I really, really wish I had, now.

The point, if I have one (I do) is that none of this is real and all of it is. This is fiction. Fiction is real. 

I get into arguments about this at work, sometimes. Bad policy, obviously, so I don't do it very often. Maybe two or three times in twenty years. I think it a lot more than that, of course. 

Everything that's true is made up because everything's made up whether it's true or not and anyway everything is true, because how could it not be?

Don't take this as an endorsement of conspiracy theory. That's not how reality works. What's real are the connections. Everything's connected, that's the reality. 

Maybe I should have led with that.

Remember when I said I had a point? That was it. I didn't say it was an original one. 

Still true, though.

Eighties Fan

I'm working on a post about the literary Brat Pack of the 1980s. It's an idea that sidled up and tapped me on the shoulder as I was re-reading one of my favorite novels, Sad Movies by Mark Lindquist,  the brat-packer no-one ever remembers. 

It could be a while before I get round to writing the post. It's going to take a fair amount of research and a good deal of effort and I'm not sure I have it in me just yet. I might need a run-up.

I wanted to do something while the urge was fresh, though, and as I was reading I had another idea. Or, more accurately, someone else's idea. It was something Belghast posted recently. He's started a new series he's calling Mixtape Mondays. It's a great notion. I wouldn't hesitate to steal it but I'm nowhere near organized enough to go weekly. I have enough trouble nailing my monthly music roundups. 

Sad Movies is riddled with songs. Maybe not as many as movies, but a lot. How would it be if I made a one-off mixtape of all the songs the book mentions by name? I could probably manage that. I don't have a Spotify account but I could throw a YouTube playlist together...

Yeah, I could. You'll notice I haven't, though. By the time I'd finished compiling the full list I was certain sure I didn't want it permanently linked to my YouTube channel. There are a lot of songs and artists here I like but...

Maybe it would be better to stick to a single blog post. That way it can bloom briefly then disappear back into the darkness. And if anyone should ever happen on it at some future time at least it will come with context. Namely that I didn't choose any of these and I'm not claiming I like them! Although I do like most of them...

So, in the name of giving the people want they never asked for and almost certainly don't want, here are all the songs that get name-checked or have their lyrics quoted in some old book you never heard of. And of course I'm going to monologue throughout. You know that's why you come here. Okay, it's why I come here. Close enough.

unspecified - Siouxsie and the Banshees - And we're off to a flying start. This is playing in the next room at the beginning of the novel but Zeke, the protagonist, only mentions it because it's so loud he can't hear what people are saying. He doesn't say what song it is. So much for specificity! I've gone for her cover of This Wheel's On Fire, which was a hit in 1987, the year the book came out.

Mad World - Tears For Fears - This has been overused to the point of parody but when the novel was written it wasn't anything like the cliche it's become. It's a great song. It can hack a little overexposure.

Psychocandy (album) - The Jesus and Mary Chain - Also heard through the wall. The album, one of my all-time favorites, is playing at the party but someone takes it off and puts on The Smiths instead. Sounds like a good party. I've gone for the first track, Just Like Honey, because why not? And although I must have heard it a thousand times it only now occurs to me to wonder who the female backing singer could be. According to Wikipedia it's Karen Parker, of whom Fan site Aprilskies says "Apparently she was Bobby Gillespie's girlfriend at the time. She also drummed for the band at one early gig because Bobby had hurt his hand the night before". So now we know.

How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths - It's that man again. If only we'd known, eh? Oh well.

68 Guns - The Alarm - Here's a tune I never thought I'd mention, let alone feature, in anything I wrote, ever. Wales' cut-price answer to The Clash, ten years too late. Also a straw in the wind for the fate of my first marriage. Here's a tip: never review the gig  you've just been to as you're on the way out of the theater, particularly if the person you're talking to is the one whose idea it was to go in the first place and especially particularly if your review consists of a forensic dismemberment of their favorite band's thin, vacuous, derivative sound and lack of songwriting skills. It's rarely received well.

I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts - X - I don't really know X's stuff. They've always been around but I never really paid all that much attention to them. In the novel Zeke puts on "a tape of a local band, X" because the "incredibly unhip" Australian DJ on the car radio "is speaking as if we must be as stupid as he is since we're listening to him". I think the context suggests Lindquist doesn't expect the readers to know who X are, which is probably fair. They were always a local band, although when your home town is L.A. that means something a little different.

Let It Be - (album) The Replacements - Another moment when a whole album gets referenced. Again I've gone for the opening track, I Will Dare. Like X, The Replacements are one of those bands I've always been aware of but never really listened to. Paul Westerberg has a strong rep as a songwriter but on the few exposures I've allowed myself I'm not really feeling it.

This Is The Day  - The The - I get the impression The The were a lot bigger in the U.S. than they ever were over here, where they (he) came from. I don't think I could name a single one of their tunes. I definitely couldn't hum one.

What's So Funny ('Bout Peace Love And Understanding?) - Elvis Costello - This is a great song but even at the time I didn't much like Elvis's version and that was when I still liked Elvis himself. It's the version mentioned in the book, though, so we're stuck with it. And it is very eighties.

New Year's Day - U2 - Wow. Just... wow. There's really some stuff on this list I never imagined would appear on this blog, ever. To be scrupulously fair, I do like the intro. Until Bono starts singing. Then there's no way back.

Blowin' in the Wind - Bob Dylan, as played by a street musician. This busker "classic" turns up as Zeke watches two homeless men, one of whom only has one leg, fight outside his window. The street musician and the people watching him all stop to watch the fight instead. I'm sorry to report that no such interruptions curtail the performance I've linked. If you take my advice you'll come up with one of your own.

Boys Don't Cry - The Cure - This is a bit of a cheat in that Zeke considers listening to it then decides against it because the Cure are "too nocturnal". Are they, though? Are they really?

unspecified - Velvet Underground - He also rejects the Velvets because he's "stopped dead by a memory of Lou Reed posing like a geek in a Honda scooter commercial". And you can see his point. But as Lou said at the time "I gotta pay the rent, too, and can’t you take a fucking joke?"

White Wedding - Billy Idol - This is peak '80s, isn't it? Props to Billy for making the transition from punk to... whatever this is. It's fascinating in retrospect to see who was able to convert a moment into a career and who remained forever trapped in time's amber. For a while, there, Billy looked like he was going to make it. Then he didn't.

How Much More - The GoGos - What fascinates me even more at this long remove is how gappy my experience was at the time. I lived music in the eighties. I thought I was paying serious attention. And yet there are vast, cavernous holes in both my knowledge and my understanding. The GoGos are of seminal importance and they're exactly the kind of band I loved back then - and yet I barely remember registering their existence. If I had a time machine all I'd use it for is to go back and live through everything I lived through the first time, only this time I'd try and notice more.

unspecified - Duran Duran - Mentioned only so they can give focus to how bad things are getting. Ditto MTV. There's a whole riff about going to a restaurant and MTV playing in the background and kids watching it and their parents occasionally getting sucked in and then realizing what they're doing and turning away, embarrassed. As Zeke's friend Y.J. Ogvassed observes "Television is interesting if you have the time to watch the decline of western civ." Ironic, really.

Teach Your Children - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Here comes the anomaly. Zeke, Y.J, Zeke's girlfriend Becky and Y.J.'s dog Blackie go on a road trip to meet some space aliens, the Orgonians. ("You want to drive to Oregon?" - Becky). They start out listening to KROQ out of L.A. but reception gets patchy and then Duran Duran come on so they swap to "one of those retro stations that play nothing but "classic rock"". Isn't it reassuring to know you can still do exactly that more than thirty years later? You'll almost certainly hear the same songs.

All You Need Is Love - The Beatles - I have always liked this clip. It seemed like history to me when I was in my teens and that was ten years before Sad Movies was published. Of course I was only able to read about it. I was long past my teens before I finally got to see it.

Circle Game - Joni Mitchell - This marks the moment when Zeke has enough of the past and flips in a tape that represents his present. Fast forward almost a quarter of a century. Lana del Rey covers Joni's For Free (magnificently) on her latest zeitgeist-defining album. The past is always with us. Or the sixties. Same thing.

Here Comes A Regular - The Replacements - Them again. Zeke really likes them. I'm guessing so does Mark Lindquist.

Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan (live version) - The actual Dylan this time, playing on another retro station as the gang drive back to L.A. after the Orgonians fail to show (or do they?). "The crowd's roar rises into a cathartic frenzy and we've drunk just enough to scream along insanely as though the song is our story. Facetiously, of course". My stepdaughter had a baby last year. She named him after Bob Dylan. The past is always with us. Or the sixties. Same thing.

Stairway To Heaven - Led Zeppelin - Speaking of things that are always with us... I never liked Led Zep. Not even when I was a heavy metal/hard rock mid-teen. I thought this in particular was portentous and overblown even then - and I willingly listened to E.L.P. ! The characters in the book don't have quite my distaste for it but they're uncomfortable all the same:

" "I loved that song, once upon a time", Y.J. says. 

"So did I", Becky says. 

"Me too", I admit. 

We look at each other sheepishly and laugh".

Communication Breakdown - Led Zeppelin - Another radio song. Seems to be entirely co-incidental that it places directly after another Zep classic. If there's a significance I can't see it.

Don't Wanna Be Like That - Joe Jackson - Someone else who seems quintessentially eighties now. I'm not sure he did at the time. I liked his first album a lot but he always seemed to be like a kind of cross between Graeme Parker and Elvis Costello with a little bit less bite than either.

Suspicious Minds - Fine Young Cannibals - Looking at their Wikipedia page, FYC seem to have been a lot more successful than I remembered. I almost had them in "one hit wonder" territory but they had two U.S. number ones and a bunch of other hits. They were also born out of the ashes of The Beat, who were always my favorite two-tone band. Curious I never liked them much.

Manic Monday - The Bangles - This one's been overplayed a little but it still sounds good coming out of a car radio. Not that cars have radios any more. To no-one's surprise, I'm sure, I love The Bangles. I really like Susannah Hoffs, especially the covers she does with Matthew Sweet. Here they are covering Yes's I've Seen All Good People, of all things.

1999 - Prince - Talking of songs that have been overplayed... Still works, though, no matter how many times you've heard it.

These Days - R.E.M. - R.E.M. have always seemed to me like the boiled potato of indie rock. Plain, simple, wholesome. Nothing wrong with them but you're not going to get all excited when you get a helping. I never for one moment imagined them being as energetic - frantic even - on stage as they seem to be in this clip. Maybe I have them pegged wrong. Probably too late to worry about it now.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John - Back when he could sing. He's unlistenable now. It's very interesting, having listed all these tracks out in the order they appear in the book, how the recognition factor ascends. At the start it's decidedly indie. Then it moves through more mainstream alt acts towards the great beasts of the historic past, ending up with some of the most popular, best-selling acts of the day. I wonder if that means something? 

Heroes - David Bowie - Saving the best for last, eh, Mark?

 "My favorite old Bowie tune is playing. "Though nothing, nothing will keep us together, we can beat them, forever and ever, we can be heroes, just for one day." and my arm is around Becky and I'm thinking I should outgrow this song and wondering if I ever will".

No, you won't. No-one ever does.