Station Eleven

 Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is an eerie post-apocalyptic novel. I was reminded of California by Edan Lepucki and Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins. All are exciting page turners. All have evil messianic figures. And all are well received, though Station Eleven is the most popular of the group. St. John Mandel is a gifted writer, and there are scenes in the novel of cities slowly shutting down during a bad flu pandemic that are beautiful and terrifying. In fact, the book is a collection of excellent scenes: a party in Los Angeles, a stranded group at an airport in the Midwest, a man dying on stage during King Lear. The connecting threads are varying degrees of successful. Not everything coheres, and many elements are under-developed, including the title symbol. Some late scenes of violence are cinematic, more like a summer blockbuster than a realist novel. Of the dystopian trilogy mentioned above, I would probably most recommend Gold Fame Citrus, imperfect but more bizarre and original. Still, I read Station Eleven quickly and was entertained the whole way. 

The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is like the first few chapters of the Book of Job, stretched to the length of the Book of Psalms. It's an enormous novel in terms of word count and influence, and one does not need to have read it to encounter pop-culture references to the Joad family of Oklahoma and their ill-fated trip west. I was prepared for the suffering, knowing some of this context. But I was still surprised that within the first few miles of travel, a dog and then a grandfather die off, and the tribulations continue unabated for the next 400 pages or so. 

I have always been uneasy with Steinbeck, feeling that he "tells" more than "shows" in his narratives, reversing the famous writerly advice. This works for ninth-grade novellas like The Pearl. It does not work as well for longer, more serious tomes. I don't know how The Grapes of Wrath is functionally different than Uncle Tom's Cabin, or books reviewed on this blog that hammer home a political agenda. There is no ambiguity about Steinbeck's position, and while I'm sympathetic to the cause, I am put off by the didactic fiction. It's too bad, because Steinbeck has a great talent for plot and setting, but his characters fit too neatly into their archetypes, and the themes are persistent and obvious. Having read the book, I find myself longing for that less patronizing literature, which has a more nuanced view of complicated political subjects, and trusts its reader to develop his or her own opinions. 

Waxahatchee: Live! Tonight! Sold Out!

 This marks a small break from book reviews to cover an important topic: a record of Waxahatchee concerts I have attended, from present-day to the distant past.

Roseland Theater: (Last night, 5/2/26)

This show was co-headlined with MJ Lenderman, and it was terrific. They shared the stage, which was made to look like a living room, on swivel chairs, and mostly alternated songs, with the other headliner singing backup. They each had acoustic guitars, and the backing band was pared down--a slide/lead guitar and a bass player. For two hours, the music was subdued and intimate, a sunset sound for a weary audience. They played several covers and some excellent new stuff. It was beautiful, evocative, and (in part because Katie Crutchfield is visibly pregnant) familial.

Edgefield: (8/20/22)

I saw this show on my birthday, and it was my first concert after COVID and first at Edgefield. Waxahatchee played second on a stacked bill. Fred Armisen opened, hilariously; then Katie with just an acoustic guitar; then Courtney Barnett, who headlined the tour; and finally Sleater-Kinney. I became a fan of Barnett that night. She's a generational talent. The Portlandia undertones of the rest of the evening culminated in all of the performers on stage singing (recently deceased) Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" in workout gear. 

Online: (6/8/20)

During COVID, Katie had to cancel her Saint Cloud tour, and she offered fans chances to buy tickets to her playing each of her albums, on livestream, each Monday in June. My wife and I opted for our favorite album, Cerulean Salt. We played the board game Wingspan and listened to Katie on the computer live from her home in Kansas City. A fine evening with a fine album during a lonely time.

Wonder Ballroom: (6/26/17)

Supporting her Out in the Storm album with a big band (including her sister Allison), Waxahatchee lit up this show. I remember sunlight outside the concert hall in that solstice-adjacent evening, where a few hours before my wife and I had bougie tapas from a restaurant next door. It was warm in there, and I hung out by the water cooler. The openers were great at this one: Cayetana and pre-debut-album Snail Mail. 

The Old Church: (3/11/16)

The first time seeing an all-acoustic Waxahatchee set, this was a hushed, solemn affair. I remember she covered Lucinda Williams. I remember that Globelamp, the woman that had a troubling falling out with Foxygen, was the opener.

Doug Fir Lounge: (5/1/15)

A wall of sound, this show was. There were perhaps too many guitarists on stage, and the band members appeared inebriated. The people I dragged to this show were a little put off by it. It was Katie at her grungiest. I still thought it rocked, but it was probably the worst Waxahatchee show I ever saw. It came just a few months after her last visit, also to the Doug Fir, and I realize that I have not seen many great shows there, that the audience is almost always distracted and overly chatty. There was a bright spot here, though: Girlpool was an exciting and original opener. 

Doug Fir Lounge: (1/6/15)

I drove to Portland on this Tuesday night to catch Waxahatchee play some new songs from her soon-to-be-released album, Ivy Tripp, which was the follow-up to the seminal Cerulean Salt. I had to work the next day. It was weird--some kind of Red Bull promo show--and the Doug Fir audience talked through the quiet parts. But I remember driving home late that school night thinking, That was how music should sound.

Holocene: (11/30/13)

Waxahatchee continually grows and evolves, and I'd put Katie up against any of the New York Times's new group of best living songwriters. But there's something about this era of her work that is the best. It was the songwriting of American Weekend with the post-punk mixing of Cerulean Salt. An NPR show from that era captures what the music sounded like: quiet then loud, at times distorted and at times crystal clear. I claim, without reservation, that this period of Waxahatchee is the closest we've ever come to occupying the empty space left by Nirvana. 

At this show at a small club in East Portland, Swearin'--Allison Crutchfield's band--opened for Katie. We were all young, and it was a joyous time. The club was tiny, and it was the last time I could talk to the band members (I thanked Katie after the show; I made fun of Pitchfork with Allison). During the set, I was as entertained as I ever am during a show, harmoniously aligned with the whole feeling of the room.

Interestingly, the Auburn football Pick-Six Game happened earlier that day, and we spent time at the bar talking with Waxahatchee's then-bass player about it (they're all from Alabama). During the show, my sister-in-law showed me breaking news on her phone: Paul Walker had died. So that November 30th was a consequential day: Pick-Six, Paul Walker, and my first time seeing Waxahatchee live. 

Mexico

 Mexico: A 500-Year History by Paul Gillingham is a gigantic read. Covering Cortez to El Chapo, the book's pace is, broadly speaking, a little less than a page per year, offering a sweeping account of a land marked by complexities and contradictions. My biggest takeaway is that our southern neighbor is decentralized. Everything from government to language to drug organizations to racial categories are a labyrinthine mix of historical forces and diverse landscapes. One early argument Gillingham makes is that the Spanish never fully subdued indigenous communities (nor were they really trying to), and that for five centuries pockets of independence existed, including this century's EZLN rebels in Chiapas. A professor at Northwestern, Gillingham has a gift for perspective, putting stereotypes about Mexico (its violence, its colonialism, etc.) in context with other nations, especially the US. The result is a well-paced big history that tracks in macro terms things like population growth, migration, economics, health metrics, narcotics, foreign influence, and social movements.  Given the unwieldy nature of its subject--an enormous country at the crossroads of hemispheres--it's a remarkably lucid and informative read.

The Optimist's Daughter

 The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty is one of the most aesthetic novellas I've ever read. Laurel Hand, the woman at its center, is the last in her family. Both parents and her husband have died. This seems dramatic as she's only my age, but it's believable in a mid-century world of lower life expectancy and men lost in war. Navigating her grief and dealing with her parents' affairs keep her occupied, but she's dogged by her husband's second wife, a woman her age and one of the great antagonists in all literature. 

I've read several Welty short stories, but this was my first of her longer works. She's a powerful character writer. All of her protagonists are fully formed and rooted in her Southern landscape. They vary wildly, though, in education, race, income, and condition. Sometimes they're absurdly funny; sometimes they're selfish and racist. Here, Laurel is thoughtful, elegant, and courageous in her grace under pressure. 

The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973, deservedly. There isn't a word out of place. I found myself rereading several passages purely for their beauty. While not much happens in the plot (a death and a funeral), it reads like an extended personal essay. Grief is an important theme, but the passage of time resonates more completely throughout. There are bitter realizations about loss: the "optimist" in the title is mostly ironic. But the grand shift in the Laurel's understanding ultimately bends towards acceptance.

Saints at the River

 Saints at the River by Ron Rash is a novel that presents a morally ambiguous question. A vacationing girl is swept downriver and tumbles over a waterfall, drowning in the hydraulic behind the cascade. Unable to retrieve her body, her grieving family petitions to temporarily dam the river, an illegal operation as it has been given Wild and Scenic status. This proves controversial, and well-meaning people settle on both sides of the debate (a Christian burial vs. an untouched river). The conclusion is dramatic and tragic. Rash is a good writer and this is an absorbing, complex, and weighty narrative. While the dialogue is weak at times--too utilitarian, too expositive--the characterization is haunting and affecting, and I found myself pondering the events long after finishing the book.

Krakatoa

 Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester is an exhaustive nonfiction account of a big volcano. The Krakatoa eruption was the deadliest in human history. It killed over 36,000 people, mostly from a series of enormous tsunamis. Winchester explores everything around the volcano: plate tectonics, the discovery of plate tectonics, volcanology, animal evolution, Dutch colonialism, Victorian-era communication, Javanese local politics, the rise of Islam, economics, cartography, maritime technology, and on and on. It's too much, actually. The volcano doesn't even erupt until page 234, and by that point I don't know what else there is to possibly learn about the context of this event. Winchester's obsessive attention is made palatable by his easygoing, almost conversational prose. While I think the book probably overstayed its welcome, the writing itself was pleasant and interesting.