Bloomsday Book Review

Juliana Hatfield, Chris Power, Jean-Patrick Manchette & Sara Gran

I told you it was coming. Some of you thought I was fooling. Some of you wanted to be fooled by me. But hold your head up: the Bloomsday Book Review is here! 

But first, we have a winner!

A new subscriber has won a one-year subscription to Razorcake! Congrats and welcome to the underworld!

Movin’ on…

When I Grow Up by Juliana Hatfield

As many of you know I’m writing a book with Evan Dando of the Lemonheads. Early in his career, Dando quit the Lemonheads and joined Juliana Hatfield’s band the Blake Babies. When he reformed the Lemonheads, Hatfield collaborated with Dando on a number of songs, including his breakout hit “It’s a Shame about Ray.”

Dando and Hatfield were never boyfriend and girlfriend, but I gather they were more than very close friends. I hoped Hatfield’s memoir would shed some light on the early days of the Boston indie rock scene and help inform my view of Dando’s development as an artist.

When I Grow Up has a curious structure. Published in 2006, the story follows a short tour with her band Some Girls in support of the record Feel It in 2003. In between each stop on the tour she revisits a moment from her past, and when she returns to the tour she’s a little bit farther down the road. It’s a sturdy format that has been used to great effect in books like Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. 

Hatfield’s prose is solid and workmanlike but she has a songwriter’s knack for deconstructing specific moments in time and exploring everything that’s there. A lot of new writers stay on the surface, but Hatfield goes deep. Whether she’s discussing her tour rider, the description of a scuzzy dressing room, or a dramatic episode from her past, Hatfield thoroughly investigates the scene. 

So I was a little disappointed when Hatfield chose to skip over the periods when Dando played with the Blake Babies and she played with the Lemonheads. As for the Some Girls tour, it reads like she set out to de-glamorize every aspect of the rock and roll lifestyle. There was a time when Hatfield played at some of the biggest clubs across the country but in 2003 she was eking out a living in small to mid-size clubs where everything, and I do mean everything, was a hassle. After a couple chapters of this, the reader begins to wonder, “Why would anyone do this?” and that’s exactly where Hatfield wants you.

Once she’s demolished the myth of the rock and roll fantasy she really starts to the peel the onion and gets into the gnarly stuff: family trauma, unhealthy relationships, mental health crises. 

Here’s an anecdote that shocked me: Hatfield’s mother was a musician who was engaged to another musician. She called off the wedding, fearing that she was on the brink of making a huge mistake, and became a journalist and settled into a more conventional life. Her ex-boyfriend joined the band Mountain, which had the huge hit, “Mississippi Queen.” Neither Hatfield’s mother nor her mother’s ex-boyfriend ever got over each other. The ex-boyfriend got married to another woman who eventually killed him. Hatfield’s mother was haunted by the knowledge that she could have saved him if only she hadn’t called off the marriage. 

Whatever Hatfield’s career means to you, if you put aside the fact that she’s a singer, songwriter, and musician, and think of her strictly as an artist, the second half of When I Grow Up is immensely rewarding. Yes, the first half is a bit dull, but by methodically stripping away all the rock baggage most readers bring to the narrative, her memoir becomes an examination of why she does what she does when the vast majority of it is so unsatisfying. 

“I think that maybe it means a little too much, that I see my musical life as a sacred duty and so when it doesn’t measure up, when it all fails to be as spectacular as I’d originally intended, it is disappointing.” 

Hatfield gets deep into the weeds of what makes an artist an artist and poses questions that I rarely see in any memoir. Questions like: How do you know if all the sacrifices one makes for their art are worth it? How do you know if it’s time to stop? These are not only great questions, they are the only questions that matter. 

“The great thing about art is that, as an artist, you can always come back with another album, another painting, another book, another movie, another play, another ballet. You have the chance to prove yourself, again and again.” 

Thankfully, Hatfield didn’t stop making art. Her time away from the spotlight to write her memoir and reflect on her art seems to have spurred a rebirth of sorts. Hatfield has a new solo record out—her 19th—called Blood and it’s definitely worth checking out.

Blood by Juliana Hatfield

A Lonely Man by Chris Power

Let’s stick with the theme of books I was underwhelmed by at the beginning but knocked my socks off at the end. 

A Lonely Man is about an English writer with writer’s block. That description alone ought to cut the audience in half. I get it. Some people don’t like books about writers. Sometimes I’m one of them. But give me a tale with a whiff of Bolaño and I’m all in. 

This writer is trying to make a life in Berlin with his wife and young daughter and things aren’t going so well. At a reading in a bookstore he meets a boorish ghostwriter *ahem* who is running scared. It seems his latest client was mobbed up with some unsavory types. Now the client is dead and the ghostwriter is convinced he’s next. 

A normal person would urge the fellow to go to the police or flee the country, but writers are not normal people. Instead, our hero sees the ghostwriter’s dilemma as the solution to his own creative quagmire. 

The thing that I most admire about Power’s approach here is his willingness to flout the reader’s expectations. For much of the novel not only did I not see what was coming, I wasn’t even sure what kind of novel I was reading. Not for everyone but the payoff is exquisite. 

No Room at the Morgue Jean-Patrick Manchette

The first thing I do after I finish a tough project is read a trashy detective novel and No Room at the Morgue didn’t disappoint. I mean, yes, I was disappointed that it wasn’t a better book, but I was happy to turn off my brain for a few hours while reading this early ’70s romp through Paris. Manchette’s method is to introduce a shitload of characters and then start picking off the suspects. 

No Room at the Morgue clarified something for me. My favorite detectives are reluctant detectives, the kind who would rather not be bothered but need the money, like Cass Neary/ Or, the kind that are deep in their vices, but are compelled to get to the bottom of the mystery, like Clair DeWitt.

Tough-talking private eyes who have actual offices and tell their clients not to worry about paying them just don’t do it for me anymore. 

Marigold by Sara Gran

Speaking of Clair DeWitt, as I mentioned last week, Sara Gran has a new mystery out that’s only available in audio book format. Marigold is a spine-tingling tale of an unconventional haunting. Mystery probably isn’t the best descriptor, but it’s utterly unique and legitimately terrifying. 

Marigold has an unusual structure that makes it ideal for audio: the story unfolds as an interview between an expert in paranormal phenomena and the resident of a haunted house. Think of it not as the story of a house that is haunted but of a woman who is haunted by her house. 

I listened to it while walking down a lonely coastal road at dusk, which was not a good idea. A sucker for punishment, I kept listening while I was alone in my hotel room and had to shut it off. It was too much.

Although the story is set in Pasadena, I will always associate Marigold with those austere looking houses on Martha’s Vineyard whose cedar shingles are starting to buckle, giving it the look of an animal preparing to shed its skin.

What I’m Looking Forward to Reading this Summer

Today is June 16th, the most important day in modern letters. I don’t have any plans to engage in any James Joyce-related shenanigans at the moment, but could be persuaded. A long time ago, I was part of a Ulysses reading group when I first moved to L.A. I wrote an essay about it and it’s still one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. It’s called “Dogsbody.”

I just started listening to Pulitzer Prize-winner Annette Gordon-Reed’s book of essays On Juneteenth, which is the day that Black slaves in Texas were finally freed more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. I’m looking forward to learning all kinds of infuriating facts about our government. 

I also started Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown while I was traveling last week and I’m looking forward to getting back to it. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen fell off my radar during the push to finish Corporate Rock Sucks, but have no fear I’m back on the case.  

I hope your Fathers Day weekend is full of good books and appropriate mischief.

Portrait of the artist’s gravesite in Zurich, Switzerland