Books: I like ’em

Time for a rundown of some reading I’ve done lately:

:: Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin. If you come to this book expecting a “wild and crazy” book of comedy-in-print, you’ll walk away disappointed. If you come, instead, looking for Martin’s insights as to the early parts of his career when he toiled in obscurity before finally bursting onto the national scene, then you’ll find the book worthwhile. It’s a surprisingly unfunny and unflinching look from afar at Martin’s career. It’s not completely unfunny, mind you, but the prevailing tone is one of seriousness, and reading it, I get the impression that Martin’s own feeling is that, despite the things he’s accomplished, he’s missed as many opportunities as he’s taken advantage of.

The book starts off with Martin’s early life, and he doesn’t flinch as he reveals the emotional distance at the heart of his family relationships for much of his life. His father, it turns out, was largely emotionally abusive (and sometimes physically, as well), while his mother mostly looked the other way. Martin’s show-business career started not with comedy but with magic, and he only came to comedy gradually as opportunities arose and others fell by the wayside. It’s interesting, then, to read Martin’s analytical and theoretical approach to the craft of comedy, such as the theory he creates about an act that contains no punchlines, so that the audience will eventually start laughing out of a response to unresolved tension.

I’ve seen Martin in interviews in the years since his stand-up career ended, and he always seems reluctant to discuss those years in any great depth. It’s telling that the book’s discussions of Martin’s legendary appearances on the early years of Saturday Night Live are fairly brief, and he doesn’t mention what might be his most famous sketch, “King Tut”, at all. (It’s referenced in a single photograph of Martin, in his trademark white suit from the time with his Tut head-dress on, walking onto the stage at a stand-up show of his from the era. The photo is taken from behind.)

The book ends pretty much as Martin’s movie career begins, which I hope implies that a follow-up volume is in the offing, since I find Martin’s film work more interesting. Only The Jerk is much covered here at all, which is a shame because I’d like to know more about his better films, such as Roxanne, LA Story, All of Me, Bowfinger, and his dramatic turn in Grand Canyon. (Hell, I wouldn’t mind reading about his work on such “Huh-whuh?” projects as Sgt. Bilko and the recent Pink Panther remake, which I found funny but, well, definitely not good.)

:: I’ve noted a number of times that comics might be the ideal medium for Joss Whedon to maintain the Firefly universe; little did I know (because nobody told me!) that he’s already been doing so, with a graphic novel called Those Left Behind. The book is set before the movie, apparently, and while I enjoyed it, I was surprised that it basically feels like a standard episode of the TV series. In a comics series, the concerns over effects budgets and pacing for commercial breaks don’t exist, so I was surprised at the still relatively limited scope of this series.

It’s a typical kind of Firefly plot, where Captain Malcolm Reynolds and crew are struggling for money and looking for any kind of job they can get, eventually settling on a gig that’s probably more risk than reward, as many of their jobs end up being. In terms of story, Those Left Behind is nothing really spectacular, but the tone of the dialogue and the character interactions are spot on. Early on, there’s a moment when a villain has the upper hand on Mal and crew, but when he decides to rub Mal’s nose in it, Mal simply says, “This thing’s goin’ your way. Don’t make it go another.” And there’s this exchange after a job falls apart completely and Mal, Jayne and Zoe have to make their escape via the sewer:

JAYNE: Gonna take a while for the stink of this to pass.

ZOE: Just a sewer, Jayne.

JAYNE: Weren’t talking about the sewer.

MAL: Now ain’t the time, Jayne. Understood?

JAYNE: Well, you just be sure and say when.

I like that exchange. All through this book, you can hear the show’s actors saying these lines.

As I noted the other day, another Firefly comic is in the works. Since the next one will be a three-issue series, as was Those Left Behind, I’m concerned again about the scope of the story. Those Left Behind is simply too short. Maybe I’m overestimating the size of the market for Firefly comics, but I do wish that Whedon would be given some room to really tell a big whopper of a story…

:: …kind of like how he was allowed to do on The Astonishing X-Men. I’m not sure how long Whedon’s run on Astonishing lasted (or if it even ended), but what a run it was! Fun and exciting, with lots of terrific character moments as well as that typical Whedon “snap” in the dialog. A lot of the generic plot-devices of your typical X-Men story are on display here: the constant “anti-mutant hysteria”, the rivalry between Logan and Scott Summers, the fact that the X-Men can save New York City in full public view of just about everybody and still get absolutely no credit for it, and so on. This was the first X-Men story I’ve read in quite some time, so I was unaware of some of the more recent developments in the X-verse, such as Emma Frost joining the X-Men (other developments I’ll not mention, since they could be spoilers), but for the most part, it was very easy to get back into the swing of it all.

(And whoever’s fault it is that Whedon’s not on the Wonder Woman movie anymore can bite me.)

:: Saving the best for last in this post, Alex Ross‘s The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a remarkable book. It’s a history of the classical music of the twentieth century, a century that saw classical music fall from grace in the eyes of many as other forms of music took hold of popular imagination. Ross’s gift is his ability to show the continued relevance of classical music, and to demonstrate that it has, in many ways, remained vibrant all along, even as it moved into territories that most listeners were unwilling to go.

Ross takes a wise approach of avoiding a rigidly chronological approach to his subject, instead focusing each chapter on a specific subject: sometimes a single composer (Sibelius and Britten), sometimes a group of composers (American composers from Ives to Ellington), sometimes the musical life of a particular nation. The overall organization of the book is chronological, but the chapter-by-chapter focus is maintained in such a way as to keep the book from becoming a slogging parade of names and dates and musical works and musical terms. In this, Ross’s approach reflects that of the great history writer Barbara Tuchman.

A book on this topic cannot succeed, however, unless its author is good at writing not just about personalities and historical trends but about the music. Here, Ross’s gifts, long on display at The New Yorker as a classical music critic, shine especially brightly. He has that unusual ability to write about a musical work in such a way as to make you feel like you’re actually hearing it (although I did find myself often wishing for a companion CD, only to learn of this page of audio samples after I finished the book).

The Rest is Noise is one of the best books on classical music I’ve read. Strongly recommended.

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