High Fidelity: Dance Music for Old People

Chapter 25: “And just as it does so, there’s a howl from in front of us, a terrible, terrible noise that I don’t want to hear: I can only just tell that it’s Laura’s voice, but I know that it is, and at that moment I want to go to her and offer to become a different person, to remove all trace of what is me, as long as she will let me look after her and try to make her feel better…. when she lets go of me I feel that I don’t need to offer to become a different person: it has happened already.” (241)

Chapter 26: “I’m too tired not to go out with you.” (256)

Chapter 27: Five conversations: “Maybe I should try again, this time out loud, with my voice instead of the inside of my head.” (260)

Chapter 28: “I fall in love with both of them–with what they have, and the way they treat each other, and the way they make me feel as if I am the new center of their world. I think they’re great, and I want to see them twice a week every week for the rest of my life.” (279)

Chapter 29: “The big day itself goes by in a blur, like it must have done for Bob Geldof at Live Aid.” (286)

Chapter 30: Top 5 dream jobs

Chapter 31: “It’s easier to have parents if you’ve got a girlfriend. I don’t know why it’s true, but it is. My mum and dad like me more when I have someone, and they seem more comfortable; it’s as if Laura becomes a sort of human microphone, somebody we speak into to make ourselves heard.” (295)

Chapter 32: “What do you ever do that can’t be canceled?” (302)

Chapter 33: “And fucking… when’s it all going to fucking stop? I’m going to jump from rock to rock for the rest of my life until there aren’t any rocks left? I’m going to run each time I get itchy feet? Because I get them about once a quarter, along with the utilities bills. More than that, even, during British Summer Time. I’ve been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.” (315)

Chapter 34: “I’ve changed my mind. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. I do. I will.” (318)

Chapter 35: “I start to compile in my head a compilation tape for her, something that’s full of stuff she’s heard of, and full of stuff she’d play. Tonight, for the first time ever, I can sort of see how it’s done.” (323)

High Fidelity: Yet

1. TMPMITW

2. Rob experiments with close reading.

“And even if she hasn’t, she was definitely threatening to. What does ‘yet’ mean, after all?” (112, 143-145)

3. Why does Hornby write this exchange like play dialogue? Why does he render Jackie and Phil’s conversation as “(Jackie)” and “(Phil)”? (179)

HIM: Good. So how shall we leave it then?
ME: Dunno. (181-182)

4. How does the difference between Rob’s inner and outer commentary here suggest signs of growing up? And how does Marie define “duck noires”? (222)

“Of course I don’t. We can’t speak anymore, don’t you understand, woman? We had sex, and that was the end of it. That’s the law in this country. If you don’t like it, go back to where you came from.”

“‘Yeah. Great.'” ….
“And we have a nice time. She’s right to be American about it: just because we’ve been to bed together doesn’t mean we have to hate each other.” (189)

5. What goes on in chapter 21 (195-201), when Rob goes to Charlie’s party? What is the ratio of inner to outer speech? Does Rob retreat to making Top 5s as a way of coping with social anxiety? “How did I manage to edit all this out in the intervening years? How had I managed to turn her into the answer to all the world’s problems?” (199) And what’s with all that “(Pause.)” on page 200?

High Fidelity: Then and Now

Then…

• Alison Ashworth: “One moment you wanted to clonk them on the head for being your sister, or someone else’s sister, and the next you wanted to… actually, we didn’t know what we wanted next, but it was something, something.” (5)
• Penny Hardwick: “it was like trying to borrow a fiver, getting turned down, and asking to borrow fifty quid instead.” (10)
• Jackie Allen: “Victor was spot on, of course; in fact, I have often been tempted to seek him out when I have been plagued by diseases of the heart. He’d be able to tell me in ten seconds whether someone was worth a tattoo or not.” (19)

• Charlie Nicholson: “I lost the plot for a while then. And I lost the subplot, the script, the soundtrack, the intermission, my popcorn, the credits, and the exit sign.” (23)
• Sarah Kendrew: “Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at twenty-six; we were of that disposition.” (30)

How do we figure out who Laura is? How would you describe Hornby’s style/address?

How does Rob order and pace the story of his relationship with Laura?

What is the significance of “records”? Lists? Top 5s?

Now…

Ch. 1 LAURA: Championship Vinyl, Dick, Barry

Ch. 2 I WAS: Mums

Ch 3 I’M: “Tonight, though, I fancy something different, so I try to remember the order I bought them in, that way I hope to write my own autobiography, without having to do anything like pick up a pen.” (54)

Ch 4 THE: Marie LaSalle, “I always think that women are going to save me, lead me through to a better life, that they can change and redeem me” (63)

Ch 5 I CALL: Ian x9, soul (75)

Ch 6 EXACTLY: “I’m very good at the past”

Ch 7 FOR:  Lists, “making a tape is like writing a letter”

Ch 8 WHERE: Dick & Barry’s talents

Ch 9 THE: Explaining THE list, Marie, Rob gets overanalytical (125)

Ch 10 FACT: What you like vs. what you’re like

The Commitments: Maybe soul isn’t right for Ireland

“Another thing Jimmy noticed: they were shouting for Night Train.” (123)

“—Ah, fuck off, said Deco. —Look. ——The group won’t last forever.” (139)

“It was the best they’d ever heard. They didn’t just hear it either. They were in its way. It went through them. Man’s music.” (162)

The Commitments: What are your influences?

Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Relax by hushhush112
“Jimmy had Relax before anyone had heard of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and he started slagging them months before anyone realized they were no good. Jimmy knew his music.” (2)

“–Wha’ tracks are yis doin’? Jimmy asked.

–Tha’ one. Masters and Servants.

–Depeche Mode?” (4)

“Then the horns started, the same note repeated (–DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH) seven times and then James Brown began to sing. He sang like he spoke, a great voice that he seemed to be holding back, hanging onto because it was dangerous. The lads (in Jimmy’s bedroom) smiled at each other. This was it.” (18)

“Deco had the words on a sheet of paper. James donk donk donked, the girls UUH UUH UUHed and then Deco held the mike in his hand and sang. And sang well.” (50)

“–Tha’ was smashin’, girls, said Jimmy. –Fair play to yis. They’ll be eatin’ chips ou’ o’ your knickers.

–You’re fuckin’ sick, you are.” (60)

“—You and me together, Dean, said Joey the Lips. —Let’s show these dudes what a horn section does for a living.

—Jaysis, Joey, I don’t know.” (67)

Soul is…

• a good time
• the people’s music
• sex and revolution
• dignity

Sag Harbor extra: Now with Zombies!

Excerpts of/links to two recent interviews with Colson Whitehead, whose most recent novel, Zone One, is about zombies.

From The Rumpus:

Rumpus: All of your books are so different—from style to content to structure. I always approach each of your books knowing that it will be very different than the last one. What is the process like when you’re starting a new book?

Whitehead: I always have a few ideas that are percolating, and then after I’ve finished a book and it’s a year later, and things are sort of festering and things are disgusting in my house and I have to get back to work, whatever project I keep thinking about is the one I end up working on. Sort of a very simple process of elimination. If I have three ideas and I’m working on one more than the others, that sort of tells me that I should work on that one. In terms of why everything is different, each book is different than the one before because I’m so bored of what I just finished I want to work on something different. The next book becomes an antidote to what I did before. So Sag Harbor is very cheerful, a lot of jokes—it deals with a certain kind of optimistic part of my personality. So that’s one part of my personality. Then Zone Onebecomes how I register some of the darker aspects of my personality. The structure of The Intuitionist, which is very plot-heavy, finds it’s antidote in John Henry Days, which has a very loose structure, a lot of different voices, and doesn’t have a very controlled structure. So basically I’m definitely done with what I did last time and so I want to avoid repeating myself.

Rumpus: Do you ever think about what kind of writer you want to be? Or what you want to accomplish with your career?

Whitehead: I try to challenge myself. With Zone One, which borrows from horror movies, it’s a challenge to figure out this form—what I want to keep and what I want to throw away. So I want to keep growing as a writer. I find myself doing unexpected projects and sort of challenging my idea of where I am in my career, or what I’m supposed to be doing. In fact, I’m not supposed to be doing anything. Just finding projects that are challenging to me. I want to be a writer who keeps growing and figuring out new things and hopefully people will follow me along as I publish these things.

…

Rumpus: Would you ever want to write a movie?

Whitehead: Yeah, I like movies. I’ve written screenplays as a sort of procrastination thing for me. Like I’ll work for a couple months on this idea that’s been kicking around and then like 30 pages in I’ll just go try a novel because it’s a lot easier. That’s what I know. So why am I killing myself?

…

Rumpus: You write a lot about technology in both novels and essays. How do you think technology will affect literature?

Whitehead: I think being a writer was a crappy job when you just had typewriters. It was crappy when we just had ink and paper. And it’s sort of crappy now. It’s always just you and the page. That doesn’t change. In terms of the economics, yes obviously the rise of e-books and how people choose to read books has a big effect on the economics of the game. But whether people are buying them on paper or downloading them there’s still some poor wretch in a room who is trying to write a poem, write a story, write a novel. And so my job doesn’t change. It’s just how people receive it and economic conditions on the ground change, but that doesn’t affect what I write.

Rumpus: Do you feel you have to compete with more things now? That there are more distractions for people?

Whitehead: I write books and either people read them or they don’t read them. The rise of Facebook or e-books doesn’t change the difficulty level of writing sentences and thinking up new ideas.

And from Fresh Air with Terry Gross (click here for audio)

“In Zone One, I’m describing New York a couple years in the future, and it looks pretty much the same but the ruined city is superimposed on the city that’s still standing.”

Colson Whitehead is a 2002 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. His writing has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, andThe New York Times.

Whitehead, who also wrote Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist,John Henry Days and The Colossus of New York, explains that he wrote his latest novel in part to pay homage to the grime-filled New York of the 1970s — and to the science-fiction and horror novels he read as a child.

“It was staying in the house, being a shut-in as a 10-year-old and just curling up with The Twilight Zone or a stack of comic books that made me want to be a writer,” he says. “I envied kids who played soccer and football, but that was not my gig.”

Whitehead says writers would be unlikely to survive an apocalyptic event — as would Olympians and other high achievers.

“In the apocalypse, I think those average, mediocre folks are the ones who are going to live,” he says. “I think the A-pluses will probably snuff themselves. The C-minus personalities will probably be killed off very quickly. But it’s the mediocre folks that will become the heroes. … Anyone who survives will be a hero.”

Sag Harbor: You can’t say longing without the l, n and g

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, “The Message”

U.T.F.O., “Roxanne, Roxanne”

Roxanne Shante, “Roxanne’s Revenge”

Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam with Full Force, “I Wonder if I Take You Home”

Blondie, “Rapture”

• Sacadiliac
• The WLNG Effect: “the soundtrack of an anti-event”; “a feeling of nostalgia for something that never existed” (269)
• Melanie
• Elena: “Her final summer she was too hip and stange and ‘white-acting’ for the Sag Harbor boys and girls she’d grown up with, and went out to find others like her, her fellow unlikelies. She never brought them around, but she must have found her tribe.” (283)
• “it is hard to accept the notion of a pre-Die Hard world” (284) vs. Lethem’s “always already”
• Marv: “unimpeachably down”; “That’s so no one bites me.” “One turntable, you liked music. Two turntables and you were an artist.” (291)
• “What kind of chump forgot being a five-year-old mack?” & “Ladies and gentlemen and all of you at home just tuning in, the angel of my heart, my long lost love, was a house.” (293)
• “We were a family.” (303)
• Barry David: “That’s one patio set-burnin’ motherfucker.” “With his monkey ass.”
• “Where was my replacement, then?… And who was I replacing?” (315-316)
• “When are you heading back?” (321)

“Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”

Sag Harbor: The Book of Lists

Run-D.M.C., “Here We Go”

Signifying.

”It is amazing how much black people, in ritual settings such as barbershops and pool halls, street corners and family reunions, talk about talking. Why do they do this? I think they do it to pass these rituals along from one generation to the next. They do it to preserve the traditions of ‘the race.’ ” – From ”The Signifying Monkey.”

IF you look up ”signifying” in a dictionary, you’ll find a set of definitions. If you hear the word used by a black person, chances are you’ll need something more than a dictionary to understand what the speaker means. The word ”signifying” is situated where Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his new book situates the critic of comparative black literature, ”at a sort of crossroads, a discursive crossroads at which two languages meet, be these languages Yoruba and English, or Spanish and French, or even (perhaps especially) the black vernacular and standard English.”

To identify the concept of signifying drawn from Afro-American oral tradition and signal its difference from, as well as convergence with, another universe of discourse, Mr. Gates employs a capital letter to distinguish black usage: Signifying. Since this seemingly innocent naming – assigning upper case to black, lower case to white – also implies hierarchy and pecking order, it is itself an example of Signifying. Signifying is verbal play – serious play that serves as instruction, entertainment, mental exercise, preparation for interacting with friend and foe in the social arena. In black vernacular, Signifying is a sign that words cannot be trusted, that even the most literal utterance allows room for interpretation, that language is both carnival and minefield.

It is not difficult to understand why Africans forcibly transported across an ocean would be suspicious of a language that gave them the status of chattel slaves and defined them as less than human. Mastery of that language entailed internalization of the master’s values, paying lip service, at the very least, to the notion of white superiority. Slaves learned to resist this literal process of self-destruction by saying little, saying no, saying to themselves and each other a different version of the new tongue, a version that slipped the yoke and turned the joke back upon those who would destroy them.

“The Cosby Show,” Season 1 credits

“The Cosby Show,” Season 2 credits

“The Cosby Show,” Season 3 credits

“The Cosby Show,” Season 4 credits

“The Cosby Show,” Season 5 credits

“The Cosby Show,” Season 6 and 7 credits

“The Cosby Show,” Season 8 credits

Du Bois, or his idea of “double-consciousness,” is an unspoken presence in “Sag Harbor,” in which the characters see themselves as the embodiment of paradox — “black boys with beach houses” — and are aware both of their privilege and of the ever-present white gaze. Mr. Whitehead grew up on the Upper West Side and went to mostly white private schools. He wasn’t interested in sports and preferred to read, collect comics and watch television. He imagined that he might someday make a living by writing about werewolves. But even in middle-class neighborhoods back then, he recalled, young black men felt singled out, and Azurest came to seem a kind of refuge. “But because you come out here, safe in the middle class, you start acting out as you get older,” he said. “You don’t feel authentic. It’s not only true of upper-middle-class black kids, but look at white kids in the suburbs, listening to gangsta rap.”

Colson Whitehead, “Eat, Memory: I Scream” (NYT July 16, 2006)

• 2 cousins: Devon and Erica
• three summers in the beach house
• four wallet photos
• fifth-grade class picture
• 6 Fake Smiles
• Sacred Seven
• 8 Most Common Silences

Sag Harbor: Before sampling became an art form with a philosophy, biting off somebody was a major crime, thuggery on an atrocious scale

Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force, “Planet Rock”

Kraftwerk, “TransEurope Express”

JJ Fad, “Supersonic”

Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh, “La Di Da Di” (Related)

The Carpenters, “Top of the World”

Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor playlist on Amazon

@colsonwhitehead on Twitter

Things to think about:

• The notion of “out”
• DuBois on Double-Consciousness

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,–an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,–this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.

• Benji’s Sag Harbor map
• “Dag was bitter acknowledgment of the brutish machinery of the world.” + That was cold.
• Even Stephen: “We were brothers.”
• Martine and the “Head-Patting Incident”
• “The radio said, I am, and what of it?”
• New Coke
• “The new handshakes were out.”

Persepolis: Eye of the Tiger

A few more clips from the film version, and Marjane Satrapi talks about storytelling and showing the truth of Iran.