The Irresponsible Reader

Finally got around to picking up Ken Jennings‘ book, Braniac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs at the library. Only made it through the first couple of chapters before I fell asleep tonight (the main book I’m reading at the moment, Nanny State, has been hijacked by TLomL). This promises to be a very fun read–best first chapter I’ve read in ages.

Got a hankerin’ to start watching Jeopardy! again for some reason…

(well, didn’t actually spend the money–didn’t have it–but I have a huge shopping list now)

Every time I have a crush on a woman, I have the same fantasy: I imagine the two of us as a synth-pop duo. No matter who she is, or how we meet, the synth-pop duo fantasy has to work, or the crush fizzles out. I have loads of other musical fantasies about my crushes—I picture us as a Gram-and-Emmylou country harmony duo, or as guitarists in a rock band, trading off vocals like Mick and Keith. But for me, it always comes back to the synth-pop duo. The girl is up front, swishing her skirt, tossing her hair, a saucy little firecracker. I’m the boy in the back, hidden behind my Roland JP8000 keyboard. She has all the courage and star power I lack. She sings our hit because I would never dare to get up and sing it myself. She moves the crowd while I lurk in the shadows, lavishing all my computer-blue love on her, punching the buttons that shower her in disco bliss and bathe her in the spotlight. I make her a star. . . .

It’s odd that I’ve never pictured myself as a solo rock star. I’ve always dreamed of a new wave girl to stand up front and be shameless and lippy, to take the heat, to teach me her tricks, teach me to be brace like her. I needed someone with a quicker wit than mine. The new wave girl was brazen and scarlet. She would take me under her wing and teach me to join the human race, the way Bananarama did with their “Shy Boy.” She would pick me out and shake me up and turn me around, turn me into someone new. She would spin me right round, like a record.

If any part of that selection resonates with you in any way, or if you just like reading insightful men talk about their love for their wives. Then you need to read Rob Sheffield’s Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time. Sheffield is a music critic for Rolling Stone, and this, his first book, is a chronicle of his time with his wife, Renée, from their meeting to her untimely death at the age of 31. But he doesn’t tell the story straight, no sir. He frames his account in discussions of mix tapes he or she made for various times/events in their lives. The songs, and the feelings they evoke, are just as much part of their story as anything else.

I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I’m always racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with—nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life.

Before he really dives into the story of his life with Renée we are treated to some fun writing–like his taxonomy of mix tapes (e.g., “The Party Tape,” “Road Trip,” “You Broke My Heart and Made Me Cry and Here are Twenty or Thirty Songs About It”) and the story of picking the music for a school dance at 13 (which starts with the killer opener: “Like a lot of stories, this one begins, ‘I was too young to know better.’ Like a lot of stories that begin ‘I was too young to know better,’ this one involves Cheap Trick.”) In these opening chapters, we get a feel for who Rob Sheffield is, his humor, his love for music, how it’s shaped his reactions to life (or at least his descriptions of his reactions).

And then things swing into high gear. He meets, falls in love with, marries and learns to live with Renée. And we really get to know Rob as he gets to know her. He describes the night they started to fall in love:

I could feel serious changes happening to me the longer I stayed in Renée’s room. I felt knots untie themselves, knots I didn’t know were there. I could already tell there were things happening deep inside me that were irreversible. Is there any scarier word than “irreversible”? It’s a hiss of a word, full of side effects and mutilations. Severe tire damage—no backing up. Falling in love with Renée felt that way. I felt strange things going on inside me, and I knew that these weren’t things I would recover from. These were changes that were shaping the way thing were going to be, and I wouldn’t find out how until later. Irreversible.

Even if you hadn’t read the book jacket to know what happens to Renée, Sheffield litters the early chapters of the book with references to her death. But you’re still unprepared for it when it comes. Not as unprepared as he was, but enough that it jars. At this point, he’s drawn you enough into his life that you can’t help but feel for him in his pain. Those were real tears I had to try to read through (glad all the clients at work were asleep at 3:30 am) as he described calling their mother’s on Mother’s Day to tell his tragic news, or the way that he kept expecting her to call him and tell him she was coming home.

This isn’t just about their relationship, you cannot escape music in these pages. (you could also say, the book isn’t just about music, you cannot escape their relationship in these pages). Pop music is just ubiquitous in Sheffield’s world–references to songs, lyrics, performers, labels…it’s all there as part of the warp and woof of his reality, giving the account a larger, yet more accessible scope. Some of that will stay with me as long as the relationship story. Not unlike when I read Hornby’s About a Boy, his reaction to the suicide of Kurt Cobain really struck me.* I wasn’t a Nirvana fan–it’s only recently that I can say I appreciated much of their music–but reading Sheffield, I wished I had been a fan so I could’ve experienced things the way he did. Beyond the reaction to Cobain’s death, his discussion of Nirvana’s work helped me to see it in a way that even now (maybe especially now), I can appreciate it for what it was.

Funny, touching, poignant, well-written, moving. (am getting redundant there…sure sign of a post that’s gone on too long) One of the best books I’ve read this year–one of the better books I’ve read in recent years.
Grade: A+

* The total absence of this in the movie is why, no matter how nicely made the film was or how many awards it received, About a Boy was a total failure.