Bob Mould, 2016

Whenever I consider a list of my absolute favorite musicians, I tend to forget about Bob Mould. That absent-mindedness makes no sense at all because I have loved nearly 100% of Mould's music since I first discovered Hüsker Dü way back in the (celebrated) summer of 1984.

I've been listening to Bob Mould for 35+ years (Hüsker Dü, Sugar, and albums under his own name) and I can throw on any album from his discography at any time and be thoroughly engaged. I cannot think of anyone else about whom I can say that.

I find some of his stuff, like 1993's Beaster, just as musically mind-blowing as it was when it first came out. (Once it was recorded, Mould said he found it "unnerving" to listen to his lyrics.) The Times (UK): "Rarely has a band rocked out with such bleak intensity and utter conviction. A vast cathedral of noise and despair, erected and demolished in half an hour flat, this is an album which has to be heard to be believed."

Bob Mould has never done anything other than exactly what he wanted to do. His early work influenced many bands, but that acknowledgement came years after the fact. He will turn 59 this fall (We share a birthday!) and he shows no sign of a creative letdown. It's amazing.

There are other musicians who have steadfastly done their own thing (Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Elvis Costello), but that usually means there's a lot of their stuff I don't care about or actively dislike. Case in point: The songs on Elvis Costello's four albums from 1977-79 are endlessly inventive, both musically and lyrically, but I haven't cared a whit about anything he's done in the last 33 years.

That is not the case with Mould. Hell, I even like most of Modulate, his 2002 electronica-influenced album which confused (and turned off) a lot of the fans of his deafening guitar sound. (Though I freely admit I have never listened all the way through the 219 seconds of "Megamanic"!)

Bob Mould

October 15, 2016, Bologna, Italy, with John Wurster (drums) and Jason Narducy (bass)

A Good Idea / Changes / The End Of Things


Hoover Dam / No Reservations / Tomorrow Morning


Something I Learned Today / Come Around / Losing Time


In A Free Land / Celebrated Summer

KEXP, Seattle, WA

April 16, 2016
Hoover Dam / See A Little Light / The Descent / I Don't Know You Anymore / You Say You / Voices In My Head / Hold On / If I Can't Change Your Mind / Makes No Sense At All



May 10, 2016
The End Of Things / Losing Time / You Say You / The Descent / Black Confetti

Hüsker Dü

Camden Palace, London, UK, May 14, 1985

New Day Rising / It's Not Funny Anymore / Everything Falls Apart / Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill / I Apologize / If I Told You / Folklore / Terms Of Psychic Warfare / Powerline / Books About UFOs / Chartered Trips / Diane / Celebrated Summer / Every Everything / Makes No Sense At All / Pink Turns To Blue / Ticket To Ride / Reoccurring Dreams/Dreams Reoccurring / Eight Miles High / Love Is All Around

May 1: When Most Of New York City Got Up And Moved

Dan Lewis, Now I Know, September 26, 2013:

There are roughly eight million residents of New York City. According to a 2010 article in the New York Times, 70% of them rent. That's about 5.5 million people, each of whom could be moving to a new place once their current lease runs out. Yet despite the incredible number of both apartments and renters, in general, the process of renting an apartment in New York City (and particularly in Manhattan) occurs over a short period of time. Typically, a renter starts his or her search only a few weeks before moving, checks out a dozen or so places over a day or two, and upon finding something suitable, quickly readies an application and bank checks to cover fees. The whole system — to use the term loosely — is a frenetic ordeal which hardly seems like it could be worse.

But until about seventy years ago, it was. Because almost everyone moved at the same time.

Sometime in the 1600s or early 1700s, New York City developed an odd tradition. Leases, across the city, expired at 9:00 AM on the first day of May. The origins of this tradition are unclear. Wikipedia cites to two different sources, one of which references the English celebration of May Day (explained here), another which claims that the Dutch settlers originally came to Manhattan on May 1st, and the tradition is borne out of that. In any event, the cartoon above, from 1856, encapsulates the madness — thousands upon thousands of people taking to the streets, with all their stuff, moving from one apartment to another, all on the same day. Davy Crockett observed the phenomenon in 1834, as retold by Futility Closet:

By the time we returned down Broadway, it seemed to me that the city was flying before some awful calamity. 'Why,' said I, 'Colonel, what under heaven is the matter? Everyone appears to be pitching out their furniture, and packing it off.' He laughed, and said this was the general 'moving day.' Such a sight nobody ever saw unless it was in this same city. It seemed a kind of frolic, as if they were changing houses just for fun. Every street as crowded with carts, drays, and people. So the world goes. It would take a good deal to get me out of my log-house; but here, I understand, many persons 'move' every year.

All in all, this "moving day" was a terrible idea.

Being an informal one, and a custom at that, it should have been an easy one to change. And it wasn't universal. That is, not everyone's lease ended on May 1, so it should have been pretty easy for landlords or renters to demand a different date if given that one by the other. But the tradition persisted, to the point that in 1912, Harper's Weekly imagined a world with automated, flying "moving stations," as seen here. Moving Day was entrenched in a city which to a person, with few exceptions, hated it.

It quite literally took a world war to end the practice. When the United States mobilized its citizens in World War II, it created a shortage of able-bodied men stateside, making it nearly impossible to find someone to help you move on "moving day." Tenants stayed on past their leases and the practice of relocating on that date began to erode. And then, in 1945, the end of the war dealt "moving day" a death blow. As the New York Times reported in October of that year, troops returning from abroad created a major housing shortage in the city, which "turned 'moving day' into a myth."

Bonus fact: "Everybody moves!" days aren't a lunacy unique to New York of lore. July 1 in Montreal has the same thing happening. The operative word there is "has," because (as of 2013) it's still a thing there.

Jason & The Scorchers: Live 1984-2016

Ladies and Gentlemen ... Jason & The Scorchers!

Both Sides Of The Line - The Palace, Los Angeles, CA, 1984


Great Balls Of Fire - The Palace, Los Angeles, CA, 1984


The Race Is On - Roskilde Festival, 1985


Can't Help Myself - Roskilde Festival, 1985


Absolutely Sweet Marie - Roskilde Festival, 1985


If Money Talks - Roskilde Festival, 1985


Tear It Up (with Link Wray) - Roskilde Festival, 1985


Harvest Moon - Cat's Records Outdoor Show, 1985


White Lies - The Conan O'Brien Show


Shotgun Blues / Ghost Town - "After Hours" (Nashville Channel 5's late night variety show), 1986


Golden Ball and Chain - "After Hours" (Nashville Channel 5's late night variety show), 1986


White Lies - Farm Aid, Austin, Texas, July 1986


Broken Whiskey Glass - Farm Aid, Austin, Texas, July 1986


Absolutely Sweet Marie - Fairview Park, Normal, Illinois, July 4, 1987


I Can't Help Myself - Fairview Park, Normal, Illinois, July 4, 1987
[Jason sings the song while helping fans cross a small creek to get closer to the stage!]


Sing Me Back Home - Fairview Park, Normal, Illinois, July 4, 1987


White Lies - Fairview Park, Normal, Illinois, July 4, 1987


Great Balls Of Fire - Fairview Park, Normal, Illinois, July 4, 1987


If You've Got The Love - Lafayette Club, Bloomington, Illinois, April 1993
[First show in 6 years!]


Shop It Around - Lafayette Club, Bloomington, Illinois, April 1993


Golden Ball And Chain - Lafayette Club, Bloomington, Illinois, April 1993


Drugstore Truck Drivin' Man - Rock Temple, Kerkrade, Netherlands, April 30, 2010


Broken Whiskey Glass - The Garage, London, England, August 5, 2010


White Lies - The Garage, London, England, August 5, 2010


Somewhere Within - The Berkeley Cafe, Raleigh, NC, January 2011


Take Me Home Country Roads - Helsinki, Finland, July 2012


When The Angels Cry - Manchester Academy, July 3, 2015


Self Sabotage - Music City Roots Live, The Factory, September 2015


Absolutely Sweet Marie - Bluegrass Underground, Cumberland Caverns, McMinnville, Tennessee, April 1, 2016


Shop It Around - Bluegrass Underground, Cumberland Caverns, McMinnville, Tennessee, April 1, 2016


Harvest Moon - Bluegrass Underground, Cumberland Caverns, McMinnville, Tennessee, April 1, 2016



FULL CONCERTS

Capitol Theater, Passaic, New Jersey, November 22, 1985

Lost Highway
Help, There's A Fire
Are You Ready For The Country
Last Time Around
Shop It Around
Broken Whiskey Glass
I Can't Help Myself
Harvest Moon
If Money Talks
Still Tied
Change The Tune
I Really Don't Want To Know
White Lies

Piedmont Park, September 4, 1995


MTV, The Cutting Edge, 1984

The Paperback Art of Robert McGinnis

J. Kingston Pierce, Crime Reads, February 1, 2019:

It's possible that you don't immediately recognize the name Robert McGinnis. But if you are even remotely interested in vintage crime, mystery, and thriller novels, you've certainly spotted his artwork. After all, he's spent the last 60 years painting exceptional covers for those sorts of paperback yarns, most of them by still-familiar authors (Erle Stanley Gardner, Brett Halliday, Ruth Rendell, John D. MacDonald), though others came from writers whose popularity has since waned considerably (Carter Brown, Edward S. Aarons, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Harold Q. Masur, and the like).

Over the course of his career, McGinnis—set to celebrate his 93rd birthday this coming Sunday [February 3]—has produced more than 1,000 unique paintings employed on American paperback book covers. His works are distinguished by their precise use of color, the artist's preference for portraiture over depicting story scenes, and especially the lithe and luscious women who are so often the focal point of his canvases. ...

"[T]here's nothing like a McGinnis woman," raves Charles Ardai, the editor at New York publishing house Hard Case Crime, which specializes in vintage-style paperback fronts and has made plentiful use of this artist's output over the last decade and a half. "Leggy, serene, aloof, unruffled, coiled, and deadly or enigmatic and sensuous, Bob's women are like otherworldly creatures, breathtaking and perfect." ...

"One thing I've noticed on the crime novels especially," says [Art] Scott [who in 2014 co-authored (with McGinniss) The Art of Robert E. McGinnis], "is how brightly lit most of his images are—rather unexpected, given how many of those books fall into the 'noir' genre. Together with his clean lines and uncluttered layouts ... he never missed a chance to work the light-and-shade angle and did it brilliantly."

Pierce edits The Rap Sheet and runs its companion blog Killer Covers. (In May 2018, he highlighted 12 exceptional cover artists.) In this recent article, he includes 39 McGinnis covers, but my favourite (of the ones I have seen) is not among them.

I also love certain editions of the Michael Shayne books, with the detective's head in a circle at the top of the cover.

47 Years Ago, I Caught A Really Big Fish

Sunday, February 13, 1972: I went ice fishing with my father and caught a walleye that we measured as 24 inches long (and 5½ pounds). I was eight years old - and I've never caught a bigger fish.

I love this next photo. I have done nothing to remove the various imperfections, which along with the dull grayness of both the snow on the frozen lake and the sky, gives the picture the feel of some doomed Arctic expedition from the 1910s.

We would get out on the ice around dawn. My father would drill 12-15 holes in a straight line, maybe 30 feet apart. Looking at the space between (what I think is) me in the middle of the frame and the "tip-up" in the foreground gives you an idea of the distance between the holes. (My father built his own tip-ups by hand. I never thought about the name of these things when I was a kid. For all I knew, it was my father's (or a regional) term. Looking online now, tip-up seems to be the general name.)

Having them in a long row made it easy to keep an eye on all the lines. When a fish grabbed the bait, a minnow usually a few feet above the bottom of the lake, it triggered the release of a bright orange flag (which was bent and on a hook of some sort). When you saw a flag had sprung up, or someone else pointed it out, you knew something was going on. And you'd run to the hole.

On exceptionally cold and/or windy days, running to the very end of the row was not fun - though the exercise did warm you up a tiny bit. You often had to break the thin film of ice that had formed over the hole before you could begin pulling up the line (and, hopefully, the fish). You tossed your gloves aside and quickly brought up the cold line with your bare hands. When it was time to re-set the tip-up, the small pile of wet line beside you had usually frozen and it took time to untangle it all. My fingers were often completely numb by the time I could put my gloves back on.

The smaller fish below look like perch.

French Readers and American Noir

Interesting comments from several authors, quoted in Gabino Iglesias's CrimeReads article, "Why Do The French Love American Noir?"

Jake Hinkson:

I think the French are fascinated with American noir because they're fascinated by America. They view noir as a body of literature that is critical and revealing of American culture. ... [T]hey've always had a fascination with ... the "real America" ... That's why the French were the first ones to the recognize the artistic merits of things like jazz and gospel. It's why they embraced regional artists like Faulkner. And it's why they were the first ones to recognize that guys like Thompson and Goodis weren't just failed pulp writers but rather authentic and unique literary talents.

William Boyle:

They know that American noir presents a true portrait of this country, that it doesn't hold back or hide things, that it isn't afraid to search the dark corners. I think they know that noir has always told the truth about America—they were the ones who first sensed that. Also, they're not turned off by unlikeable characters or unhappy endings.

David Joy:

In my experience, French readers tend to be a braver lot. I think the thing about good noir that's hard for some folks is that it forces you to go to uncomfortable places and to confront uncomfortable things and a lot of readers just aren't willing to do that. I think that's particularly true of American readers. ... For the most part, what moves in this country are airplane books—something I can pick up in a terminal, read on a flight, and toss in the trash before I catch a cab. It's something to fill time more than it is something to challenge beliefs. I hear people say, "Well, I didn't relate to the characters." I'm sorry, but I don't believe relatability is a requirement of good literature. In fact, I believe the opposite. I believe good literature allows us to walk in the shoes of someone we might otherwise dismiss. For me, that statement about not relating to characters boils down to a refusal to venture into uncomfortable ground. That's not something I've experienced with French readers. They tend to still want books that are challenging. They seem to still view literature as an instrument of critical thinking and change.

Benjamin Whitmer:

Books just matter more. Somebody over there once told me that the difference between their politics and ours is that we could never elect a politician who didn't profess to believe in God, and they could never elect a politician who didn't read. It's baked into every part of their life. Reading and books are afforded an entirely different weight in France.

Hinkson:

Reading in France is a national obsession. It's a wholly different culture than the States. ... At book events, writers don't read their work, they just discuss it with the audience. And the questions aren't "Where do you get your ideas?" or "What time of day do you like to write?" It's graduate-school level discussions of character and theme. It's probing and personal. And, I mean, these questions are coming from regular people. Americans have always been suspicious of intellectuals. The French just...aren't. They respect intelligence and expertise. ... For a writer, it's extremely exciting.

Joy:

For starters, the French consume more books. You look at the statistics and the French are always in the top ten well-read countries in the world. They're typically somewhere around number seven. The U.S., on the other hand, we're lucky to make the top 30. People just don't read here. In this country, one third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. Forty-two percent of college graduates never read another book after college. Eighty percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year. Seventy percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. That's staggering.

Whitmer:

To be honest, I'm not sure it's especially a French thing. I think people all over the world read noir, read tragedy. The only place where there is no place for noir or tragedy is America. As David Vann said, "We have the idea in America that a book should have likable characters and make us feel good by the end. This is a new and idiotic idea and erases 2,500 years of literary culture." No other culture is dumb enough to believe that. That takes a specifically pathological self-concept and denial of reality.

Nice And Naughty

Dan Lewis, Now I Know:

The word "nice" comes from the Latin word "nescius" which literally meant "not knowing" — basically "ignorant." When the word was coined in the 14th century, it retained that meaning — according to Oxford Dictionaries, the word "nice" "began life in the fourteenth century as a term for 'foolish' or 'silly.'" It was, unambiguously, an insult, which in a roundabout way, is how it got to this catch-all way to give faint praise today.

For its first generation of use, the denotative meaning (let's go with "foolish") held firm, but in time, that gave way to the word's negative connotation. Before the 14th century was out, people began using "nice" as a one-size-fits-all insult; as Huffington Post describes, the word "was used to refer to a variety of less-than-great sentiments including wantonness, extravagance, ostentation, lasciviousness, cowardice and sloth."

As the Middle Ages waned, so did the breadth of the term. The word "nice" became increasingly about laziness and less about extravagance, which is still not very nice, but less so than before. Still, that wasn't enough for the word's meaning to change to something lukewarmly positive. But we were long on our way. Lazy people were also seen as reserved, private, and demure, and, the word "nice" became somewhat of a neutral term. Huffington Post summarized it like this: "Dive deeper into the Middle Ages, and the meaning deflated. The word started to hint not at ostentation or cowardice but shyness and reserve; not in a negative way, but certainly not yet positively."

Of course, that changed. With the emergence of the Enlightenment, people liked their elites more reserved, more, say, "ladylike," and the word "nice" accurately described these people. As a result, "nice" became the word of praise (faint as it may be) it is today.

Bonus fact: The word "naughty" has a similarly muddled history, and one which may reflect on how we, by default, often blame those in poverty for their situation. It literally means "having nothing" — someone with "naught". The negative connotation came later, as GOOD Magazine explains: "In the 1300s, naughty people had naught (nothing); they were poor or needy. By the 1400s, the meaning shifted from having nothing to being worth nothing, being morally bad or wicked."

Writing A Book About Books

I've never given much serious consideration to those "1000 _______ To _______ Before You Die" books. However, this Literary Hub conversation with James Mustich, who spent 14 years researching and writing the recently-published 1000 Books To Read Before You Die, makes me want to track down his book. Completing a project like this properly requires a ton of time and effort, and it sounds like Mustich took his job extremely seriously.

Thomas DePietro has known Mustich since they were "high-school poets together over forty years ago" and he states that Mustich "walks a fine line between literary critic and enthusiast" and has created "a book that ... exults in the sheer joy of reading, and sharing those pleasures with others".

From Mustich's comments:

It's almost a thousand pages, nearly 900 pages of text and then various indexes to help people navigate through the list that I've made. For each of the thousand books I've written a brief essay, and added endnotes with relevant information and lots of recommendations for further reading. Altogether, there are more than 5,000 books referenced in it. ... I signed the contract for this book 14 years ago. It's been quite some time in the making. ...

The idea is: What about books speaks to people? In general and then specifically. What has spoken to me in particular? There's everything in here from, in terms of a reader's lifetime, from Goodnight, Moon, to The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion's book about grief. And chronologically it ranges from the Epic of Gilgamesh up to a book published last year called Life in Code, by Ellen Ullman. ...

[T]here's probably, say, 250 of the 1,000 that are what are generally considered classics, so you can trace in what I've done a kind of course, if you wanted to, in literary history. ... Toward the end of the project, I begin to realize something that was motivating me, somewhat unwittingly. I have two daughters, who are both adults, in their twenties. They have always been readers, and they couldn't walk out of their rooms in our house without tripping over a pile of books. But they don't have the constant sense of the continuum of literature that was so important to me when I was growing up, which, frankly, I absorbed from spending so much time in bookstores in my formative years—not enough fresh air! So I've been reconstructing all of that by my own lights as a kind of record for them, I think. Again, that wasn't a conscious thing, but I think it's certainly part of what gives my book its shape. ...

I framed it for myself like this: what if I had a bookstore, and I could only have 1,000 books in it? I'd want to have classics, yes, but I'd also want to have something for anybody who walked in, and said, "I want a good mystery," or "I feel like reading something about golf." Or medicine. Or theology. Or true crime. One of the things I write about in my introduction is that inveterate readers read the way they eat: hot dogs one day, haute cuisine the next. ... [R]eading isn't all high-mindedness. ...

[F]or a long time, 1,000 seemed like so many. But then when I got towards the end, it was too few, by half at least! There are just so many good books. And closing in on the 1,000 put a fine point on what, of course, had haunted me all along: there is so much I haven't read. Through all the years I worked on the book, I tried to be thoughtful about it, but every week turned up books or authors I'd missed. And every conversation I had with a fellow reader seemed to add to that pile. ... But sooner or later, I had to draw a line. ...

One of the things that takes so long is that you not only need to know enough about the book to have something to say, but you also need to know enough about a subject or an author to know what not to say. ... If you're going to write 500, 600 words about Darwin, or about Madame de Staël, or about Ishmael Reed, you want to know enough about the extent of their work to be able to judge what's important, what to share with someone who may not have any context, and also know enough about the breadth and depth of their thinking to represent it credibly, especially if you're dealing with someone outside one's own tradition or one's own education. You want to be respectful of what you're reading and you want to make sure that you have enough sensitivity and sensibility—or just enough sense with no suffix—to recognize that the work has its own existence whether you read it or not, no matter what you say about it, and to represent that in some way. ...

What I tried to do, especially with those authors whom readers might assume they know about, or assume they're not interested in, or whose work they've always been daunted by, is to give an invitation to their books that is engaging but still robust enough give a sense of the landscapes they create. To suggest that this is what you'll be thinking about if you read this author. For most of us, too much of our reading of serious literature is when we're very young, and they're school assignments. And we approach books a certain way because of that—like they're homework. ... This is a book which I hope people will keep on their shelves and pull off when they want to read Conrad, or they want to read Virginia Woolf, or they're looking for a good mystery. It's meant to be used as a resource. ...

[T]here is a sensibility that runs through my book that I hope readers will find congenial, and come to trust. I don't mean trust as in "agree with," but respect and react to in considered ways. ... [R]eading, and the kind of interior life it presupposes, is really important to one's mental health, and I would also venture to say, to one's moral health and to the mental and moral health of society at large. And that when you pick up a book you are also acknowledging others, because you're reading someone else's words, and you're learning about new worlds. That dialogue that books encourage is critically important. ... I think books have receded from the frontlines of the cultural conversation in a way that's not healthy for the culture.

The Washington Post praised the "scope and diversity" of Mustich's choices. The book "invites rapturous browsing even while eliciting, and expecting, argument. ... It's hard to imagine that such a massive compendium could have been done better or demonstrate a more supple and catholic taste."

 And a look at some sample pages reveals a gorgeous layout.

Winter Rain

Port Hardy does not get cold enough during the winter months for much snow to accumulate. Instead, it rains. A lot, we were told.

It was raining on the night we arrived. We drove the final two hours through endless forests in the dark, with copious rain and heavy fog. I hoped the elk living in those forests had the good sense to stay home that night. (Two signs along the way instructed us to watch out for elk for the next 65 kilometers (40 miles), then another 45 km. So pretty much constantly!)

That was the only rain we saw for our initial week. But most of the last three days have been very wet. There is a baseball field near our house and walking Diego (not pictured at left) in the outfield is like walking in two inches of water. It's like the grass does not exist.

I finally got my work equipment this past Monday and was connected for my shift on Tuesday. So far, the only drawback is the delay in retrieving and saving documents. Of course, those delays are measured in handfuls of seconds, but it still can be frustrating.

But, in general, working at home - I'm going to really enjoy this. Finish a job, then walk down the hallway and put some wet clothes in the dryer. ... Change the CD in the small stereo in my office. ... Email a co-worker that I can start a job, but I need to walk my dog first. ... Continue organizing my office while keeping an eye on the in-box.

Last evening, for my dinner break, I grilled a couple of burgers, had some tater tots going in the oven, and built my first fire in the fireplace. I brought a comfy chair over by the fireplace and ate with Diego laying beside me. Later, he got up and sat rigidly behind me, just over my left shoulder, keeping his sharp eyes focused on the dwindling supply of tater tots.

Baseball: In the summer, most weekday Red Sox games will begin at 4 PM (or 5 PM), which means that home night games will likely be over by 7:30 PM. During the first week of the 2019 season, the sun will set about 8 PM. In late June, it will get dark at roughly 9:45 PM. ... Two hours of daylight after a night game!

Port Hardy, After One Week

One of the most amazing things about Port Hardy (or our little part of it) is the silence. Walking out the back door onto the deck with Diego, turning right and going along the garage and down the driveway to the street, I would hear absolutely nothing. Except for some bird calls. The silence has a real presence. When there is no sound, you believe you can hear the utter quiet; the term "deafening silence" refers to something real. There is a weight to it, a heft.

No passing cars, no honking, no traffic on nearby streets, no machinery, no planes overhead, no bus announcements, no trains, no yelling. Two days ago, I heard a noise, which I determined was a ferry departing down on the bay.

We arrived at 9435 Mayors Way last Tuesday evening. It was a little dusky as we drove north from Campbell River. Port Hardy was 2.5 hours away. In addition to the dark, it began raining, so we saw nothing of the endless scenery of the trip's final 230 kilometers (143 miles). The landlord's agent was waiting - with a fire in the fireplace - to welcome us and give us keys. Later, we put a comforter down on the floor and had some dinner.

We knew we would be arriving at night and the house would be empty, so we had the movers in Mississauga load our mattress and a futon (and several boxes of necessary supplies) at the back of the U-Haul. When we took these items out, I noticed that several boxes were sopping wet on the bottom, the cardboard falling away in pieces. I immediately feared that the U-Haul had a leak somewhere and (considering the days of rain we had traveled through) a lot of our stuff was now ruined. I tried putting it out of my mind, figuring that another 12 hours would not matter if the boxes already had been in water for a week or more.

Four local men came by at 10 AM the following morning and unloaded the U-Haul. I quickly saw that my fears about water damage were unfounded. My brother-in-law, who had driven the U-Haul across the country, surmised that two large jugs of water at the back of the truck had frozen. The plastic containers had then expanded and cracked and some melting ice had leaked out. It turned out that the water was really only in one area and nothing was damaged - other than the many things broken or damaged by the incompetent movers back in Ontario. (I wish the Port Hardy guys had been able to pack the truck.)

We spent the rest of Wednesday and Thursday unpacking, hooking up computers, putting legs back on tables, filling bookshelves with books, storing the flat boxes and bubblewrap in the garage. We had two great meals in town - including perhaps the best fish-and-chips we have ever had - which was tremendously encouraging.

Because Laura would be driving south to Nanaimo on Sunday for two weeks of job training (and her brother and his wife were returning the U-Haul in Campbell River before continuing on to Nanaimo, where they would take a ferry back to the mainland), we decided to explore the town a bit on Friday and Saturday. We drove down to Tsulquate Park (maybe three minutes from our house) and walked along the water, passing a playground, the ferry dock, and a large wooden carrot.

Laura also spotted two bald eagles high in the treetops, scanning the water.

My happiness over this move and our new situation has been a pleasant (and somewhat strange) surprise. The house, rented for several hundred dollars less than our 19th-floor Mississauga apartment, the outdoor space of a deck, the remoteness of the town, the ability to work from home ... it is striking how every single aspect of this resettlement has gone smoothly and wonderfully.

Yesterday I drove into town, thinking I would go to the library and the Port Hardy Museum (which are part of the same building), but I forgot they are both closed on Monday. I walked into Cafe Guido because there is a book store off on one side (The Book Nook), in a semi-lower floor, with some used books among the the new ones. In a craft store upstairs, I met an adorable golden-haired young dog. I bent down to pet him and he poked his nose towards my jacket pocket, where there were bits of Diego's peanut butter crackers. The dog followed me around the store before giving up and walking back by the register and laying down.

I bought a tea and walked past the library (a sign on the door: "No Bathroom - Key Went Missing") and found the Ministry office for which I had once hoped to work (before my law firm suggested working remotely). Back on the main street, one business was closed, the owner having added an explanation ("More Medical Procedures!"). I saw the post office down one street, so I went and picked up our mail.

I sat out on the deck reading for a bit, with Diego on the stake in the side yard. Our neighbour in the house beyond the deck came over and said hello to Diego. She and her husband are retired and they travel a lot in their massive RV (Arizona, Florida, and "down island"). They apparently are famous (relatively speaking, of course) for having the most Xmas lights on their house, but they are behind schedule this year. A pizza delivery guy asked her over the weekend, "So where are the lights?" She wanted to know if she could come into our yard to string lights on the fence separating our yard and their driveway because there are plants and whatnot on her side. I said sure. (There are some lights up now, but I don't think she will top the houses I saw in Brooklyn decades ago.)

There has been a lot of frost on the grass every morning, with the temperature around freezing. The snow/ice crystals on the top of the fence posts and the car roof are pointy or fuzzy.

The smoke from chimneys tells me that many people have wood stoves or fireplaces going in the mornings. The morning quiet and the smell of wood burning is exquisite. We will need to purchase some firewood, which I believe one of the movers said he chops and sells.

It's hard to tell for sure after only one week, but Port Hardy seems to be the right amount of town for me. At age 55, the basics are pretty much all I need. Everything is a mere 3-5 minutes away and there is neither traffic nor crowds (as long as I avoid the grocery store on the weekend or late afternoon). I also really like the uniqueness of every single house. I hope to drive around soon and take more photos.

And while it was raining on the night we arrived, I don't think it has rained at all since. On Monday and today, it reached 10 degrees C (50 F).

I love being so close to the water. In the first picture below you can sort of see a road in the middle of the picture going off to the left. There is another slight curve and then it goes down a hill and Queen Charlotte Strait is visible.

Today, I got a library card. When the librarian looked at my Ontario drivers license, she asked what brought me to Port Hardy. I told her my wife was the new librarian in this branch. She knew someone had been hired, and we talked for a bit.

I also drove out of town to take a picture of the Welcome To Port Hardy sign we half-saw in the dark last week.

I want to learn about this area and the various small towns.

At Long Last! "Blood On The Tracks" Is The Focus Of Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series: Volume 14

In September 2012, Bob Dylan released an alternate take of "Meet Me In The Morning" (from Blood On The Tracks) as the B-side to "Duquesne Whistle". At that time, it was reported that "Meet Me In The Morning" was a track from the soon-to-be-released Volume 12 of Dylan's Bootleg Series.

However, that did not happen. Volume 12 ended up being devoted to The Basement Tapes. Volume 13 was an overview of Dylan's "Christian Period" (1979-81).

It was announced last week that the Blood On the Tracks set - which must have been mostly completed and ready to go six years ago - will be released on November 2 as Volume 14! More Blood, More Tracks will include six discs comprising "every surviving take" from the New York sessions, including false starts and "studio banter".

For fans of what many people (including myself) regard as Dylan's greatest album, this confirmation is still stunning news - because it was never clear what would be released. Would it be everything, as was done with The Cutting Edge, an 18-disc set of everything recorded for Dylan's mid-60s masterpieces Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde On Blonde? Or would it be a sampling, as was done with the gospel sessions for Trouble No More? And would there be anything included that was previously unknown?

More Blood, More Tracks will feature over 70 previously unreleased recordings, though they are all songs, either from the official album or the two outtakes released in more recent years. But there is no possible way this set will not be riveting because it is impossible for Dylan to sing a song the same way twice. Even in successive takes, he will emphasize different words, perhaps also changing the lyrics slightly. The personal nature of these songs only heightens that aspect of his performance. Also the recordings for this album were done solo, with a full band, and with a partial band.

The music will no doubt be a revelation, but then there is this: the accompanying book will include "a complete reproduction of one of Dylan's legendary handwritten 57 page notebooks", in which he wrote and revised the album's 10 songs. (There are also at least seven songs written at the same time but not recorded.*) There are stories about the infamous "red notebook", but there were actually two or three notebooks. This is Holy Grail stuff! The original notebooks are currently held in a museum in New York City and are not available to researchers until after Dylan's death.

I see "Idiot Wind" scrawled at the top of the second page and the song spills over to the third and fourth pages. I also read "Blame it on a simple twist of fate" near the bottom of the first page. In March 2016, The New York Times published an article about Dylan's archives is Tulsa, Oklahoma, and included close-ups of three other notebook pages:

While Dylan's shopping lists ("hot dogs") or to-do lists ("hook phone back up") are interesting, I hope there are not too many of them in MBMT.

*: The unrecorded songs, according to Clinton Heylin's The Recording Sessions 1960-1994: "Bell Tower Blues", "There Ain't Gonna Be Any Next Time", "Where Do You Turn (Turning Point)", "It's Breakin' Me Up", "Don't Want No Married Woman", "Ain't It Funny", and "Little Bit Of Rain".

The recording history of Blood On The Tracks is slightly irregular. A test pressing was compiled from the New York sessions and sent to a few journalists in late 1974. As the legend goes, Dylan played this test pressing for his brother David around Christmas and, based (perhaps) on his brother's feedback, decided to re-record five of the songs, making the final album a mix of the two sessions. It wasn't long before bootleg copies of the test pressing began circulating and Dylanologists have been arguing which version of the album is "better" ever since.

Unfortunately, the multi-track masters of the five re-recordings are all that survive from the two Minneapolis sessions. Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard, in A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks, offer a fuller accounting of what was played. This information most likely comes from interviews with the various musicians. (Odegard was one of the Minnesota musicians.)

December 27, 1974, Sound 80 Studio, Minneapolis, Minnesota
1. Idiot Wind (Rehearsal)
2. Idiot Wind
3. Idiot Wind
4. Idiot Wind
5. Idiot Wind (Released on Blood On The Tracks)
6. You're A Big Girl Now
7. You're A Big Girl Now (Released on Blood On The Tracks)

December 30, 1974, Sound 80 Studio, Minneapolis, Minnesota
1. Tangled Up In Blue (G version)
2. Tangled Up In Blue (partial A version, rehearsal)
3. Tangled Up In Blue (Released on Blood On The Tracks)
4. Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts (rehearsal)
5. Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts (Released on Blood On The Tracks)
6. If You See Her, Say Hello (rehearsal)
7. If You See Her, Say Hello (Released on Blood On The Tracks)

Bob Dylan / More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Volume 14

[The information in italicized brackets comes from Michael Krossgaard previously-published research. While he had access to recording logs and files in the archives of Columbia/Sony Records, the information may not be entirely accurate. Also, the information included in MBMT may not be completely correct, as noted below.]

DISC 1

A&R Studios, New York, September 16, 1974
1. If You See Her, Say Hello (Take 1) – solo
2. If You See Her, Say Hello (Take 2) – solo – previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3
3. You’re a Big Girl Now (Take 1) – solo
4. You’re a Big Girl Now (Take 2) – solo
5. Simple Twist of Fate (Take 1) – solo [incomplete]
6. Simple Twist of Fate (Take 2) – solo
7. You’re a Big Girl Now (Take 3) – solo
8. Up to Me (Rehearsal) – solo [not included by Krossgaard]
9. Up to Me (Take 1) – solo
10. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts (Take 1) – solo [not included by Krossgaard]
11. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts (Take 2) – solo – included on test pressing [listed as Take 1 by Krossgaard]

DISC 2

A&R Studios, New York, September 16, 1974
1. Simple Twist of Fate (Take 1A) – with band
2. Simple Twist of Fate (Take 2A) – with band [incomplete]
3. Simple Twist of Fate (Take 3A) – with band
4. Call Letter Blues (Take 1) – with band
5. Meet Me in the Morning (Take 1) – with band – edited version included on test pressing and Blood on the Tracks
6. Call Letter Blues (Take 2) – with band – previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3
7. Idiot Wind (Take 1) – with bass
8. Idiot Wind (Take 1, Remake) – with bass [incomplete]
9. Idiot Wind (Take 3 with insert) – with bass [listed as Take 4 by Krossgaard]
10. Idiot Wind (Take 5) – with bass [incomplete]
11. Idiot Wind (Take 6) – with bass
12. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Rehearsal and Take 1) – with band [incomplete]
13. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 2) – with band [incomplete]
14. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 3) – with band [incomplete]
15. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 4) – with band
16. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 5) – with band
17. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 6) – with band
18. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 6, Remake) – with band [incomplete]
19. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 7) – with band [incomplete]
20. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 8) – with band

DISC 3

A&R Studios, New York, September 16, 1974
1. Tangled Up in Blue (Take 1) – with bass [incomplete]

A&R Studios, New York, September 17, 1974
2. You’re a Big Girl Now (Take 1, Remake) – with bass and organ
3. You’re a Big Girl Now (Take 2, Remake) – with bass, organ, and steel guitar – included on test pressing and previously released on Biograph
4. Tangled Up in Blue (Rehearsal) – with bass and organ [not included by Krossgaard]
5. Tangled Up in Blue (Take 2, Remake) – with bass and organ [listed as Take 1 by Krossgaard]
6. Spanish Is the Loving Tongue (Take 1) – with bass and piano [listed as "?" by Krossgaard]
7. Call Letter Blues (Rehearsal) – with bass and piano [listed as "Blues (incomplete)" by Krossgaard]
8. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 1, Remake) – with bass and piano
9. Shelter from the Storm (Take 1) – with bass and piano – previously released on the Jerry McGuire original soundtrack
10. Buckets of Rain (Take 1) – with bass
11. Tangled Up in Blue (Take 3, Remake) – with bass
12. Buckets of Rain (Take 2) – with bass
13. Shelter from the Storm (Take 2) – with bass [listed as "slow" by Krossgaard]
14. Shelter from the Storm (Take 3) – with bass [incomplete; listed as "fast" by Krossgaard]
15. Shelter from the Storm (Take 4) – with bass – previously released on Blood on the Tracks

DISC 4

A&R Studios, New York, September 17, 1974
1. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 1, Remake 2) – with bass [listed as "slow" by Krossgaard]
2. You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Take 2, Remake 2) – with bass [listed as "fast" by Krossgaard]
3. Buckets of Rain (Take 1, Remake) – previously released on Blood on the Tracks [not listed by Krossgaard]

A&R Studios, New York, September 18, 1974
4. Buckets of Rain (Take 2, Remake) – solo [incomplete; listed as Take 1 by Krossgaard]
5. Buckets of Rain (Take 3, Remake) – solo [listed as Take 2 by Krossgaard]
6. Buckets of Rain (Take 4, Remake) – solo [not listed by Krossgaard]

A&R Studios, New York, September 19, 1974
7. Up to Me (Take 1, Remake) – with bass [incomplete]
8. Up to Me (Take 2, Remake) – with bass
9. Buckets of Rain (Take 1, Remake 2) – with bass
10. Buckets of Rain (Take 2, Remake 2) – with bass [incomplete]
11. Buckets of Rain (Take 3, Remake 2) – with bass [incomplete]
12. Buckets of Rain (Take 4, Remake 2) – with bass – previously released on Blood on the Tracks
13. If You See Her, Say Hello (Take 1, Remake) – with bass – previously included on test pressing
14. Up to Me (Take 1, Remake 2) – with bass [incomplete]
15. Up to Me (Take 2, Remake 2) – with bass
16. Up to Me (Take 3, Remake 2) – with bass
17. Buckets of Rain (Rehearsal) – with bass
18. Meet Me in the Morning (Take 1, Remake) – with bass – previously released on "Duquesne Whistle" 7-inch single
19. Meet Me in the Morning (Take 2, Remake) – with bass
20. Buckets of Rain (Take 5, Remake 2) – with bass

DISC 5

A&R Studios, New York, September 19, 1974
1. Tangled Up in Blue (Rehearsal and Take 1, Remake 2) – with bass [incomplete]
2. Tangled Up in Blue (Take 2, Remake 2) – with bass [incomplete]
3. Tangled Up in Blue (Take 3, Remake 2) – with bass – included on test pressing and previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3
4. Simple Twist of Fate (Take 2, Remake) – with bass [false start]
5. Simple Twist of Fate (Take 3, Remake) – with bass – previously released on Blood on the Tracks [Krossgaard lists 3 takes for this date]
6. Up to Me (Rehearsal and Take 1, Remake 3) – with bass [incomplete]
7. Up to Me (Take 2, Remake 3) – with bass – previously released on Biograph
8. Idiot Wind (Rehearsal and Takes 1-3, Remake) – with bass [incomplete]
9. Idiot Wind (Take 4, Remake) – with bass
10. Idiot Wind (Take 4, Remake with organ overdub) included on test pressing and previously released on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 [Krossgaard says overdub recorded on October 8]
11. You’re a Big Girl Now (Take 1, Remake 2) – with bass
12. Meet Me in the Morning (Take 1, Remake 2) – with bass
13. Meet Me in the Morning (Takes 2-3, Remake 2) – with bass [Krossgaard lists 6 takes: 3 incomplete and 3 false starts]

DISC 6

A&R Studios, New York, September 19, 1974
1. You’re a Big Girl Now (Takes 3-6, Remake 2) – with bass [not mentioned by Krossgaard]
2. Tangled Up in Blue (Rehearsal and Takes 1-2, Remake 3) – with bass [incomplete]
3. Tangled Up in Blue (Take 3, Remake 3) – with bass

Sound 80 Studio, Minneapolis, MN, December 27, 1974
4. Idiot Wind – with band – previously released on Blood on the Tracks
5. You’re a Big Girl Now – with band – previously released on Blood on the Tracks

Sound 80 Studio, Minneapolis, MN, December 30, 1974
6. Tangled up in Blue – with band – previously released on Blood on the Tracks
7. Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts – with band – previously released on Blood on the Tracks
8. If You See Her, Say Hello – with band – previously released on Blood on the Tracks

Notes on Disc 5:

The notes state that "Tangled Up in Blue (Take 3, Remake 2)" from September 19 was included on the test pressing and released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3. However, the booklet included with The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 states the song was recorded on September 16. (But that cannot be correct if there was only one incomplete take done that day.) Also, "Tangled Up In Blue" and "Idiot Wind" on the test pressing are not the same takes that appeared on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3.

More - though certainly not all - will be revealed on November 2.

The Death Of Truth

Michiko Kakutani was a book critic at The New York Times for more than three decades. She has written The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump.

Bridey Heing, Longreads:

[I]n this tight volume [160 pages], Kakutani teases out seemingly disparate strands of cultural and political developments in the United States and weaves them together into a thorough yet readable narrative of how America grew into a place where truth is subjective, and a reality TV star can become its leader. ...

This work is interested less in the fanaticism of true believers than in the complicity of the average citizen, and the ways in which the entire system shifted away from factuality to subjectivity over the past sixty or so years.

[H]er analysis of cultural trends and the rise of subjectivity adds most to the conversation — and is perhaps the most controversial of her targets. ... "The postmodern argument that all truths are partial (and a function of one's perspective) led to the related argument that there are many legitimate ways to understand or represent an event...[I]t's also been exploited by those who want to make the case for offensive or debunked theories, or who want to equate things that cannot be equated." ...

She quotes Newt Gingrich, the architect in many ways of the Republican party we currently have, from a 2016 interview in which he makes false claims regarding crime rates. When called out for claiming FBI statistics were only "theoretically true," he responded, "What I said was equally true. People feel it."

That attitude — that an opinion, if deeply felt, can stand counter to a fact — is likely all-too familiar at this point. ... The Trump administration, with their alternative facts, is speaking the language of a society that leans more heavily on opinion than objective reality and has become more reliant on personal narrative than fact for understanding the world around them. ...

As a result, opinions that are not backed up by facts are given airtime and normalized by a mass media that does not know how to navigate a surreal world they, in part, helped build — perpetuating the cycle rather than breaking out of it.

A lengthy excerpt from the book was published by The Guardian.

If a novelist had concocted a villain like Trump – a larger-than-life, over-the-top avatar of narcissism, mendacity, ignorance, prejudice, boorishness, demagoguery and tyrannical impulses (not to mention someone who consumes as many as a dozen Diet Cokes a day) – she or he would likely be accused of extreme contrivance and implausibility. ... But the more clownish aspects of Trump the personality should not blind us to the monumentally serious consequences of his assault on truth and the rule of law, and the vulnerabilities he has exposed in our institutions and digital communications. It is unlikely that a candidate who had already been exposed during the campaign for his history of lying and deceptive business practices would have gained such popular support were portions of the public not blase about truth-telling and were there not systemic problems with how people get their information and how they've come to think in increasingly partisan terms.

With Trump, the personal is political, and in many respects he is less a comic-book anomaly than an extreme, bizarro-world apotheosis of many of the broader, intertwined attitudes undermining truth today, from the merging of news and politics with entertainment, to the toxic polarisation that's overtaken American politics, to the growing populist contempt for expertise. ...

For decades now, objectivity – or even the idea that people can aspire toward ascertaining the best available truth – has been falling out of favour. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s well-known observation that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts” is more timely than ever: polarisation has grown so extreme that voters have a hard time even agreeing on the same facts. This has been exponentially accelerated by social media, which connects users with like-minded members and supplies them with customised news feeds that reinforce their preconceptions, allowing them to live in ever narrower silos. ...

Orwell wrote that "political chaos is connected with the decay of language", divorcing words from meaning and opening up a chasm between a leader's real and declared aims. This is why the US and the world feel so disoriented by the stream of lies issued by the Trump White House and the president's use of language to disseminate distrust and discord. And this is why authoritarian regimes throughout history have co‑opted everyday language in an effort to control how people communicate ...

[Trump's] personal assault on the English language. His incoherence (his twisted syntax, his reversals, his insincerity, his bad faith and his inflammatory bombast) is emblematic of the chaos he creates and thrives on, as well as an essential instrument in his liar's toolkit. His interviews, off‑teleprompter speeches and tweets are a startling jumble of insults, exclamations, boasts, digressions, non sequiturs, qualifications, exhortations and innuendos – a bully's efforts to intimidate, gaslight, polarise and scapegoat.

Precise words, like facts, mean little to Trump, as interpreters, who struggle to translate his grammatical anarchy, can attest. Chuck Todd, the anchor of NBC's Meet the Press, observed that after several of his appearances as a candidate Trump would lean back in his chair and ask the control booth to replay his segment on a monitor – without sound: "He wants to see what it all looked like. He will watch the whole thing on mute."

The Real Question: "How Many Brown People Can Live In America And It Still Be America?"

The Southwest Political Report, June 20, 2018

Donald Trump isn't anti immigrant. He's a White Supremacist. This isn't about immigrants. Melania Trump is an immigrant. This is not about the children of immigrants. Ivanka Trump is the child of an immigrant. Eric Trump is the child of an immigrant. Donald Trump Jr. is the child of an immigrant. Joe Arpaio is the child of immigrants. ... The Klansman Fred Trump was the son of immigrants. ...

This is not about immigration. This is not about the law. This is about the fear of a Brown America. ... [H]ow many Brown people with Spanish last names can live in America and it still be America? This is the question that animates this so called immigration debate. It is the driving force behind it. This is what is meant by infestation. This is what is meant by animals. This is what is meant by drug dealers and rapists. This is what is meant by bad hombres. This is what is meant by calling El Salvador a shithole. This is what drives for the call for a wall. This is what is meant by saying Mexico will pay. ...

The theme of Brown people as a threat to White standards, civility and safety is an old trope in US politics. ... Trump did not make these politics up. But he picked them up and ran with them in a way we have not seen for generations. ...

[This] is about the fear of becoming. This fear of White people being forced to assimilate to a growing population that in regions of the country already outnumber them ...

This isn't about immigration. It never has been. It is about the changing face of America. ...

Book 6 Of My Struggle Will Be Published On September 4!

Amazon and Penguin Random House say September 4. (Penguin UK says August 30.)

The final installment in the long awaited, internationally celebrated My Struggle series.

The full scope and achievement of [Karl Ove] Knausgaard's monumental work is evident in this final installment of his My Struggle series. Grappling directly with the consequences of Knausgaard's transgressive blurring of public and private, Book Six is a troubling and engrossing look into the mind of one of the most exciting artists of our time. Knausgaard includes a long essay on Hitler and Mein Kampf, particularly relevant (if not prescient) in our current global climate of ascending dictatorships.

My Struggle is a series of six autobiographical "novels" in which Knausgaard reveals the banalities and humiliations of his life, his private pleasures, and his dark thoughts (as Wikipedia puts it). Knausgaard, who is Norwegian, published the six books from 2009–2011. The English translations began appearing in 2013.

I have no idea how I missed about 97% of the hype, but I did. It wasn't until December 6, 2016, that I opened Book 1. I was immediately addicted, and read all five books - a total of roughly 2,700 pages - in one month. It was (with perhaps one exception) the most enjoyable and astounding reading experience of my life*. And I want to re-read the five books right before diving into Book 6 (which is reportedly 1,264 pages!).

*: Evan Hughes of The New Republic said the books are "like opening someone else's diary and finding your own secrets". Zadie Smith admitted, at one point: "I need the next volume like crack."

In 2013, the Guardian stated that My Struggle "deserves to be called perhaps the most significant literary enterprise of our times":

A man in his 30s, married and living in a pleasant city in Norway, with his first novel just published to much acclaim, Knausgaard suffers from an indefinable malaise: his writing feels obstructed and forced, and its motivations uneasily egotistical; his personal and domestic life seem to constrict him while being unarguably the fruit of his own free choices. ...

What unfolds is a painstakingly detailed account of mid-life, as Knausgaard documents his meeting and relationship with a new partner in Stockholm, their progress into marriage and parenthood, their construction of domestic space and social life, the evolution of their familial relationships and the changing politics of their own bond. These are the universal themes from which My Struggle draws its abundance, and since there is no narrative requirement to attenuate them, Knausgaard finds himself in the position of being able to write about modern middle-class private life with a compendiousness and precision that are entirely singular and new.

One month later, the Guardian noted that in Book 2,

Knausgaard is brutally, painstakingly, viciously truthful – or at least appears to be – about his relationship with his wife and children. Linda is mostly presented as a stubborn, lazy, self-obsessed depressive, while his children are often seen as inconveniences, ignored and abandoned, or used as weapons in domestic disputes.

That is all true, but (a) there is much more in that book and (b) Knausgaard is at least every bit as "brutally truthful" about himself, sometimes to a shocking degree.

Book 3 concerns his childhood from ages 7-10 and Book 4 details his time as an 18-year-old teacher in a tiny fishing village in northern Norway. Book 5 finds Knausgaard in Bergen in his twenties, struggling to become a writer. (He supposedly wrote Book 5 - 550 pages - in only eight weeks.)