Finally!

In my previous post, I remarked on the lack of plot in Delta Blues, by Ted Gioia, saying that it was mainly an anthropological look at the Delta Blues. This was interesting, but at times quite monotonous and textbook like. But, finally, in chapter three, it starts recounting the lives and stories of major blues players. Chapter three starts out describing the history of the previously unmentioned Mississippi plantation of Will Dockery, dating from the mid 19th century. Gioia describes it as an relatively upstanding plantation, "The late Will Dockery - who had abstained from smoking and drinking, and always dressed in an austere black suit - had aimed to uplift, not corrupt, his black workers, taking care of their needs, both earthly and eternal. Instead of jukehouses, he could boast of two churches (one Methodist, the other Baptist) and two elementary schools on his land, as well as a commissary, a sawmill, and a blacksmith's works. When he learned that town practitioners were overcharging his tenants, he hired a white physician to reside on the plantation and take care of all patients, whether black or white." (46) When reading this, it seems totally unrelated, but Gioia soon introduces blues great Charley Patton. As Gioia says, Patton was a "hard drinking, loose living, work shirking field hand hanging out among the ramshackle cabins and broken-down boxcars that passed for living quarters on the northern end of the plantation. " (48)
Patton is painted as a rough, uneducated man, “Patton could only spell one word, his first name; and even that he couldn’t write down, but merely name the letters.” (52) Gioia points out an interesting observation, “He was proud and boastful, and often contentious. H.C. Speir, the talent scout responsible for Patton’s first recordings, remembered him as “kinda forward” for a Southern black man of his day.” (48) Because of this forwardness, he gives a new face to the black, southern blues musician, not as an entirely suppressed, being, but an intense, fun-loving, outgoing person. Now that I have the information and background that the first textbook-like chapters gave me, I have something to relate the stories of individuals to, as well as a context for their lives. I’m looking forward to reading about more blues this week.

The Blues

Delta Blues, by Ted Gioia, is quite different from how I imagined it would be. The blues, born in the deep south, with roots in Africa, clearly didn't have scholarly beginnings. Because of this, I expected Delta Blues to be a recounting of stories of the lives of blues performers. Perhaps it will get to be more story oriented, but as of now (page 45), it takes a very anthropological look at the blues. Gioia writes, "Without the blues, much of the music we hear every day would be fundamentally different, eviscerated and tepid." This excerpt demonstrates the professorial approach that he takes to talking about the blues, describing it in the scholarly terms of "eviscerated," and "tepid." He goes very in depth when talking about the instruments that influenced blues in it's early days in Africa, referencing little known instruments, "The diversity of these African instruments is remarkable: the bolon, with its striking appearance of a hunter's bow married to a calabash drum; the harplike kora, with its twenty-one strings, perhaps the most expressive traditional intrument found in any part of the world; the two-string konde of Burkina Faso, with metal bells attached to its neck, so that it jingles when the strings are plucked; the lutelike ngoni, an ancestor of the banjo, often unfairly dismissed as a hillbilly novelty in the Americas, but in Africa the instrument of heroes and kings." He goes on to talk about how these intruments influenced early blues, and how the cultures that employed these instruments were also influencial in the distinct sound of the delta blues.
As well as acting as an anthropologist, Gioia also takes the stance of a historian, when addressing the path that the blues has followed since the nebulous date of its creation. He begins by recounting the performances of minstrel troupes and medicine shows. Gioia describes their performaces, "In addition to the standard music and comedy fare, and the inevitable promotion of a healing potion, the shows might represent trapeze artists, circus acts, ventriloquism, dramatic skits, stage magic, vaudville routines, or anything else that might hold an audience's attention for a few minutes at a time." These minstrel troups and medicine shows also had distasteful, offensive portrayals of black people by whites who would smear charchoal over their faces. These "blackface" skits, usually inclued performances of the delta blues. "At a time when few black musicians had the means to present their music directly to the public, these surrogates took on undue influence. For many Americans, especially those outside of the South, their attitudes toward the county's growing slave population, their sense of African-American vernacular speech, music, and behavior, were shaped as much by these vulgar routines as by any firsthand encounters with black culture," Gioia explains. He goes into more detail about a few blues musicians who lived after the popularity of these "surrogate" performers. The next chapter, titled Dockery's Plantation, appears to be more story oriented, with a picture of blues great Charley Patton. This will be a nice break from the textbook style writing of the first two chapters.

magazines

For the past few years, I've had a subscription to the Atlantic monthly. For the past few months, I've had a subscription to the Economist weekly. Both of these publications I enjoy reading very much. I am always very apprehensive for Mondays when the Economist comes and I get to see what the headlines are and take a quick look at the articles for the week. They mainly are on foreign affairs, but there is always a very interesting technology section and a section devoted to an interesting person who has died. For example, the issue before Christmas profiled a man who had had a lobotomy because he had been having up to 11 seizures per week. After the procedure he only had 2 seizures for the next year, but he was also incapable of forming new memories. He had had the operation when he was 16 years old, my age, so he only remembered things that happened before he was 16. He died last year at the age of 91. That's 75 years of only remembering years 1 through 16. In the Atlantic, they have a very eclectic mix of topics. This makes receiving the next issue especially fun because I never know what I am going to get. For example, last issue, they had a transcription of an interview between one of the Atlantic correspondents and the man who is in charge of holding all of the US's debt in China. They also have articles on interesting parts of the world and unique foods. I spend a lot of time reading these, but at least it gives me a reason to look forward to Mondays.

Sinclair Louis

I recently finished a book by Sinclair Lewis, a Minnesotan author from Sauk Center, called Babbit. It is about a man in the early 1900s who is very discontent with his life and the social demands of his very conformist "friends." It was a pretty good book, but it lacked a solid plot. I read it because my dad recommended it. I am now onto a book called Main Street, also by Sinclair Lewis. I started it the same day that I finished Babbit. I am, however, finding that what I wrote for my blog a few weeks ago, called Picking a Good Book, is once again coming true. While I do like Main Street, I am finding that the writing is so similar that it is almost as if I am reading a sequel to Babbit, that has slightly different characters. For example, Main Street is also about demands of society in which the main character feels out of place. The thoughts of the main character are similar to those of Babbit, and it seems the only difference between the two protagonists is gender. I found out by reading The Winter of Our Discontent, that huge changes in writing style and content can be hard on a reader; now I'm also finding that too little change can also be tolling.

The Internet

This year, as much as any, I have used the Internet to get information instead of other sources like books and magazines. This may not be a good thing, an article published in the July/August issue of the Atlantic titled Is Google Making Us Stupid? argues. It says that because people have gotten used to the quick switching of directions and tasks that the Internet allows, they are not able to read books and longer pieces of literature. I have not noticed this at all, but I've had the Internet at my disposal for as long as I have been able to comprehend the meaning of words. I will never know how I have been adversely affected by the Internet. Perhaps if I had never known of the internet then I would be able to concentrate on longer pieces of literature for a longer time, but even if this is true, would it be worth it? It seems to me that the answer to this question is unequivocally no. The ease with which it is possible to fetch useful information on the web is mindboggling. I have the ability to gain any piece of knowledge at the click of a mouse. I would not give this up in order to be able to read at greater length. But I'll never know if the Internet has cursed me in this way.

The Road

The Road is shaping up to be a great book. I was somewhat dumbfounded and angry when I heard that we were going to be reading a book by an author who doesn't use quotation marks, and as I had heard at the time, used periods sparingly. Dumbfounded because I was sure that a literary work of this description couldn't be considered a literary work at all, and therefore had no place in a language arts program, and angry because I thought that sifting through text rendered meaningless by lack of punctuation would be a waste of my time. Luckily, the rumor of the lacking periods was false (although McCarthy might have been able to pull it off). Surprisingly, I am finding The Road to be quite readable, even one of the most enjoyable books I've read in a very long time.
The lack of appropriate punctuation regarding conversation is something that I am now enjoying. I feel like it forces me to think a lot more while I read, allowing me to gain a deeper understanding of the book, while teaching me something about the variations of writing style. So far, reading The Road has taught me that writing has no limits, and because of this, it can be made your own. It has also taught me not to jump to conclusion about pieces of literature, and to try new and different books that I normally would not read.

The Last One

As the last person on Earth, I would be at a loss to find things to do. I do enjoy many things like reading, practicing saxophone and piano, making and viewing art, biking, as well as various other things, but as the last person on Earth, I would not find any fulfillment in these or other things because I would have nobody to do them or discuss them with. Without anyone to listen to your music, why would you spend time practicing an instrument? With nobody to discuss literature and get perspective on it, why would you read? With nobody to view, discuss, and share art with, why would you spend time learning about it or creating it? With nobody to pay for items or skills, why would you hone your own skills in order to make a profession out of them? Basically, I see almost everything I enjoy doing in life as serving the purpose of bringing me pleasure from making me more able to interact with other people because of skills and hobbies that I develop. An uninhabited world with me as the exception, would demonstrate the hostility of solidarity. Luckily however (or perhaps not....overpopulation is a concern too) the world is filled with people, about 6,740,422,806 acc0rding to www.census.gov. I say luckily because this puts the odds of me being the sole human on earth at 1/6,740,422,806, or about .0000000148358645856% I could keep going but you probably get the point.