WWH/CJE Hippie Digest: Bob don’t give a damn – Knopfler impressive – TC Boyle: ‘It’s a godless world, without hope’ – Picnic without joy
TC Boyle: ‘It’s a godless world, without hope’
TC Boyle talks about being a ‘complete control freak’ and why he feels compelled to write
Tom Cox,.guardian.co.uk – ‘It’s all over,” says TC Boyle. “This planet is doomed. In a very short time, we’re probably not even going to have culture or art. We’re going to be living like we’re in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” In 2000, Boyle published A Friend of the Earth, a novel set in 2025 in a California recently devastated by ecological collapse, where numerous animals have become extinct and rain falls heavily for the majority of the year. “Looking back,” he says, “I should have probably moved the date forward to 2015. We live in a very different world to the one that 19th-century novelists lived in. It’s a godless world, without hope.”
“I worry about everything – every sick baby, every vanishing species – all the time,” says Boyle. He says that the lack of control he feels in the rest of his life has led to him becoming a “complete control freak” as a writer. “I’ve been lucky in my career in that nobody has ever said ‘no’ to me. I don’t require much editing. The book you see on the shelves is pretty much the book I hand in. I’m not a member of any organisation or team. I was in a band once, but I was the singer. I’m enslaved to writing to the point where I sacrifice almost everything else.” Since 1979, when his first short story collection, Descent of Man, was published, this obsessive work rate has resulted in six further story collections and 14 novels, all of them written with a breakneck energy that comes across on the page. More…
Bob Dylan disappointing, Mark Knopfler impressive in classic rocker two-pack at Rogers Arena
BY STUART DERDEYN, THE PROVINCE – Frankly, my dear, Bob don’t give a damn.
Reviewing Bob Dylan live is an exercise in futility in some ways. For his fans, the man is infallible. Even when he’s bad — and there are many stages in his career that even the most devout gloss over — he still can do no wrong. The 71-year-old living legend just isn’t open to standard critical scrutiny.
It becomes more about describing the journey of the concert as the Man laid it down on Friday night at Rogers Arena than about the standard big-stadium show assessment.
For many in the audience, it was about reliving a long-lost era. For others, it was a chance to check an icon off of the gig bucket list. Dylan leads off a pack of classic rockers coming through town in November including Leonard Cohen, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen. Not one of those artists will put on a performance like the one Dylan gave us.
As ever, his set list was what he felt like playing. It’s not like he’s on the road to promote Tempest. His 35th studio album released Sept. 10 is out there for those who desire it; there were enough of them to have it hit No. 3 on the Billboard 200. Personally, for recent work, the triumvirate of Time Out of Mind (1997), Love and Theft (2001) and Modern Times (2006) is a no-brainer. Well, those and his pop culture-defining ’60s work. Duh. More…
PICNIC WITHOUT JOY
Company cookout
picnic on the lake
lots of beer and soda
swimming, horseshoes
and hide and seek in the woods,
the bittersweet smell of hot coals
fat in the flames
hamburgers on the grill
but then
the boy dropped a hot dog
in front of his old man
who tore into the boy
with words
as sharp and hard
as a club and sword
gutting and crushing him
in front of colleagues and peers
wearing bathing suits and shades,
and the boy slinked away
trying his best to vanish
hiking deep into the woods
and its dark green peace
faintly echoing the distant
squeals and laughter
of loud and happy picnickers
until late afternoon
when the crowds peeled away
and he heard his old man
calling out his name
searching for the boy
who preferred to hide
until dusk came down
and he would emerge
hungry and silent
before an old man
concerned more
it seemed
about saving face
than finding him
while there were still
a lot of people around.
Entangled and strangled
in the shadow roots
buried and bruised
under that second growth forest,
the boy considered his chances
that he and his old man
might share and feel defeated
by the same sullen hope.
by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
May 2010
