Feeling Driven

Having written the post for yesterday I realised I'd concentrated on all the music I am now longing to purchase. I also realised I'd completely understated the sheer amount involved. If I tell you that the names Yusof Islam, Paul Weller, Hank Williams, Levon Helms (and The Band, but as separate categories) and The Last Shadow Puppets comprise simply the beginning of the list you'll appreciate the extent of the problem. On the other hand, I think there's a reasonable case for arguing that all the work of these gentlemen should be part of the collection of any right thinking muso. Or is that simply self-deception? (Of course it is, but it works beautifully.) But my real point is that I realised I'd said nothing about books.

This, saying nothing I mean, is due to the fact that at this point in time I genuinely don't want to buy any more. This will only last to the point that I've completed my MUST READ list, but I'm reasonably confident it will last until then. (Of course, there's quite a list of texts I will immediately be shelling out on when the list, I mean the first list, not the second list - for some reason I find myself concocting all sorts of lists lately, something I rarely did in my youth - is put to rest. However, it's not so much that I want to buy these books as it's simply in the natural order of things that I must do so.)

Which leads to me to a quick run-down of my latest reading. I'm still making progress - slow, but distinct - on Mailer's A Fire on the Moon. I know he wrote this for money (but then, what writer doesn't/didn't, unless it's Joyce? - but I'm talking here about quick money and a lot of it from the magazine that commissioned him) because he says so right up front. And sometimes I can't help but wonder if all the technical data is just filler, but then I realise it's reasonably inspired filler, creating a kind of poetry of the machine. It's just that there's so much of it, and also that the ideas are essentially those of his great journalism of the sixties and, being more than a little aware of them, (I was a major fan at one time) I'm beginning to find the repetition a trifle wearing. Oddly enough, I've never read The Executioner's Song, which seems to be accepted generally as Mailer's most accomplished work. I didn't read it as I'd sort of fallen out of love with his work when it was published, assuming it would be more of the same. I get the impression from a distance that that's what it is, but better. Of course, this is now on the list, the second one.

The other thing I've got on the go (now in Book One) is Browning's The Ring and the Book, my third attempt to read the poem from cover to cover in the last two or three years. I suppose as with Mailer it's the sheer detail I'm finding difficult, but Browning can also be infuriatingly obscure even in the middle of his finest bits. It's embarrassing to admit that I still haven't done justice to this one, but also quite motivating in terms of doing the right thing. The only other text I can think of on which I have stalled more is Proust's mighty blockbuster, and I cracked that eventually. (Goodness me, this is beginning to sound as testosterone-driven as a Transformers movie.)