By popular demand, another batch of recommendations. I wish I could more sweepingly generalize that you asked for it, but some of you actually did. Besides, it’s the slow time of the year, the contemplative time, and I’m thinking that another post about Apple, or Google, or venture capital, would be contrary to the mood. So, I repeat, by popular demand, and continuing from where the first installment left off, which installment was a series of rock’n'roll ideas for the shopping season, here is a selection of rock’n'roll books, for your time away from the daily grind.
- Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. From the king of rock criticism, the inventor of the terms “punk rock” and “heavy metal”, editor of the anti-Rolling Stone publication Creem Magazine, and the one reporter in whom Lou Reed had met his match, this is a selection of the essays that elevated contemporary music journalism to the level of great literature.
- Thomas Pynchon, Vineland. Considered light by Pynchon standards, this novel is maybe for that very reason one of the most enjoyable by the reclusive author last seen as a cartoon with a paper bag over his head on the Simpsons. The voice being authentic, however, the scene qualified as a “public appearance” – the author’s only in some fifty years.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Written in the philosopher’s early youth, partly on the battle field and partly in a prisoner of war camp during World War I, this is a long series of brief statements and sub-statements, numbered and classified in logical sequence, beginning with “1. The world is everything that is the case.” and ending with “7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” The hundred-odd pages in between are the foundation of modern philosophy and, to some extent, computer science.
- Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma. It is fitting that the author published his books only under pseudonyms, the referenced one being his most renowned, because his work is consistently impossible to pin down. This one is a romance, drama, comedy, intrigue, war and adventure story, in which politics and commerce figure prominently. Not two pages will pass without some prior notion being overturned, and the title is (sort of) explained in the final paragraph.
- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince. Everybody knows this one, but not many have read it as business primer. Think of it as the fundamental textbook for mergers & acquisitions. Its companion piece, Discourses on Livy, is by the same token a book on corporate development. The two, which often contradict each other, were composed at (literally) the same time, side by side. When M&A strategies are unsuccessful, one can usually find the cause, chapter and verse, in The Prince. Scholars continue to debate what the author meant by it.
- Francois Villon, The Legacy. The first and shorter of two long poems by the Renaissance Parisian tramp, (the second and longer known as The Testament), these may be the first rock’n'roll lyrics ever heard. Themes of defiance, charity, vengeance, heartbreak, fantasy, and failed heroics, prevail. The author, university drop-out, spent most of his time in taverns and other houses of ill repute. His associations with known criminals eventually landed him in jail, where, it is presumed, he expired. Nobody knows for sure.
- Plato, Symposium. If Plato’s depiction is accurate, then Socrates’ may be the most subtle mind in history. According to Xenophon, Socrates was stocky, pockmarked, and even a little bit physically deformed. An enthusiast of much wine and feasting, he was boisterous or muted, depending. In the Symposium, Plato recounts one such Athenian soirée, in which Socrates and his friends discuss the subject of love.
There is hopefully a little something here for most of you, and you will undoubtedly have noticed that after the first entry there is only an indirect association to the musical genre called “rock’n'roll.” However, just as in the original set of recommendations I had tried, as much as possible, to offer up an antidote of sorts against the milquetoasty and unimaginative styles of what so much contemporary music has come to represent – volume and style being separate and distinct things – so here also I hope to provide some alternatives to whatever is the equivalent of that same trend in literature. Unless this time around I hear commentary to the contrary, I will consider it a matter of popular demand, once again, to post my movie recommendations in the next installment of this series. Look for it sometime before the Academy Awards.
