On Existentialism the Musical: a book by Derek Zanetti

I first saw Derek Zanetti performing under his nom de guerre as a singer/songwriter. He calls himself “The Homeless Gospel Choir”. I wasn’t at the show to see his band. He was the second of four bands, and I had left my wife at the rail so I could use the restroom and get a beer because I knew that after the second act, there would be no leaving that spot.

I came back with a full Fosters and confused about where the rest of the Gospel Choir was. There was this guy with a guitar.

But this guy with a guitar was all I needed. He sang these songs that I had never heard before. A couple of his songs made me cry, because he was so earnest and funny and just commanded the stage as he sang his protest songs. He spoke of the book he wrote. This book. He hawked it from the stage and said that his wife would kill him if any remained when he went back to Pittsburgh.

I didn’t want his wife to kill him, so I bought the book. He was at the merch booth and I shook his hand and thanked him for his set. He even signed a copy for me.

So this book isn’t in the guise of “The Homeless Gospel Choir,” instead it drops the façade of the clever name and lets the author just be Derek. In it there are stories that are poems and poems that are stories that cover the mundane every-day world, but Zanetti has a heart that makes the stories sing. I cannot separate my reading of them with my experience in first seeing him and buying his book, but I don’t have to. His art transcends the page and the stage, and those little protest songs won him a fan. I hope he keeps winning them.

Solid in the Right Places: Michael Sullivan's "Hollow World"

I am usually a SF skeptic. I have read so many famous SF writers that are famous in the genre, but after reading some of the stuff, I am turned away – I’ve had this with Herbert, Asimov, Stephenson, Heinlein, and Doctorow. I think I like SF in theory, but it may turn out I’m just a big fan of Douglas Adams or Gaiman when he writes a Doctor Who episode.

                The problem, as I see it, is that there are three distinct elements that have to come together in a SF work. The characters have to matter, the setting has to make sense, and the plot has to be interesting. So many works fail on at least one of those. Stephenson builds beautiful worlds, and he can write action, but his people are not believable as people. Asimov sets the plots in motion, but even his best work is dated. In the Foundation Trilogy, people are still smoking way in the future, along with other sexist and racist things going on. The stories are often a reflection of the time and the author’s politics. That’s why future fascism in Heinlein is no fun for me.

                But here’s the thing. Hollow World hits on all three things. The characters are developed and they change through the book. The world is fully realized without a heavy info dump or too much hand waving. The plot, though it takes a while to develop the conflict, moves organically from the setting and the characters. It is a really good book in these terms, not just good for SF. I’m glad I was able to be transported to it for a while. One thing though, there was a love-story –esque part that came to fruition after the resolution of the main conflict. It seemed tacked on and unnecessary to everything that came before it. So you can’t have everything, but this book comes very close to perfect.

There is a certain difficulty to modernism: Djuna Barnes and "Nightwood"

I think it started as a response to the impressionists. New technologies made the way stories could be told replicable by other media. Art had to move on.  I have liked a lot of modernism. I followed Joyce from the moocow to Stately, Plump through Yes. I tried to follow him all along the riverrun, but I failed multiple times. It was where he went from storytelling with a stylistic verve to just style – period. It didn’t work for me, but maybe since it has been years since my last effort I should try again.

All that is preface to build whatever ethos about what comes next: I did not like Nightwood.  It is short, and beautifully written, but the whole thing is written around the main character. She has no agency of her own and seems to exist as a character in the stories of other characters. And there’s the eternal student’s lament -- nothing happens. Even the Sapphic element, something of a angle for certain readers, feels downplayed. The lovers the main characters take on just happen to have multiple genders. Not hot at all. Maybe it was for the time, what do I know?

Basically, it was good enough that I wanted to keep reading to see if anything happened, but not good enough so that I wasn’t thumbing through the pages as I approached the end with anticipation of having finished the book. What I think it needs is one of those Cambridge Companion to Literature versions, where the text is just part of the whole and you have various academics writing around the text to help shape the context in which you read the book. There is introductory material, but it is too laudatory to really help the reader. At least it was for me. I’m just glad I’m not writing a paper on this book , because that would mean that I would have to flip right back to the start to see if I missed anything. It wasn’t good enough for that.