***

Fun fact: I haven’t read the Daniel Woodrell novel on which the film is based (yet), but I did read his Tomato Red about a decade ago. I have now spent approximately an hour so far trying to locate it

Most recently, Jason Diamond’s essay “A Kaddish for Jewish Zines.” And yesterday, my review of Jamie Iredell’s Prose. Poems. A novel.

Which, I’d say, also serves as a reminder to myself that I really need to make it over to Book Thug Nation one of these days. (Some context for that last comment can be found here.)

Two: Stephen Rodrick on the same.

Three: Jason Diamond on Morrissey and the upcoming anthology Heavy Rotation.

Cautionary tales? Absolutely. But at the same time — thinking on issues of media — I wonder if we’re missing the point. When I hear talk of publishing being boosted by a theoretical shift of books to the “impulse buy” category, for instance. Or, as Edward Champion puts it in a piece on Nick Bilton’s Tools of Change address:

Instant gratification certainly gratifies, but how precisely do all the doodads aid rumination? Maybe there are some circumstances in which it’s probably best not to have it immediately.

Right about now seems like a good time to reference the Slow Listening Movement* as well.

*-link updated, 2.26.09. More randomly, those seeking a chuckle may want to make their way here. It relates to books, and therefore is absolutely relevant.

I’ve been getting more and more enveloped in Hyvönen’s new album Silence Is Wild as the days go by. (I’m not as familiar with her debut, Until Death Comes, which I picked up tonight; I’ll be curious to re-read Jessica Hopper on both discs once I’ve given each more of a listen.) It’s somber and confessional in places, and joyous in others, and there’s a strange sense of detachment I hear in some of her songs that I find incredibly affecting. By way of a lengthy aside: I’m currently working on a review of Alejandro Zambra’s novella Bonsai. Zambra utilizes any number of distancing devices over the course of his narrative — extended metaphors, metafictional speculation, situations whose parallels feel elaborately constructed — and yet, those don’t hide the central ache that suffuses the book. Instead, their prominence ends up pointing out the specific emotions that they’re ostensibly cloaking.

The show was minimal: Hyvönen seated before a piano, sometimes signing a few random bars before beginning a song, sometimes standing to stretch between songs. A colleague joined her for harmony vocals for several songs, and the set seemed to lean more towards Until Death Comes than Silence Is Wild, if my post-show calculations were correct. Hyvönen’s voice resonated over the course of an emotionally winding set, and the crowd listened quietly, respectfully. The feeling throughout was a relaxed one, Hyvönen occasionally addressing the audience in Swedish. Towards the end of the night, she indicated that a song’s ending was something close to a sing-a-long. “Sing along,” she said, and then let loose a wicked grin. “If you dare.”

And after everything was over, the church’s rector blessed us all. It was not a bad way to spend a night at a small Swedish church in midtown Manhattan.

[Postscript: this isn't something I say often: what Ross Douthat just said.]

Molly Templeton on Twilight, and its soundtrack.

Cause Co-Motion on, among other things, wings. No, seriously. Well, kind of.