Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon

read by the author

I am not a fan of Sonic Youth. Yes, I admit it: I was in my 20s during the 1990s and yet, although I understand their appeal and I quite like a few of their songs, for the most part I have no particular liking for them. Dissonance has it place, but doesn’t generally do anything for me. On top of that, I’m easily startled by sudden loud or jangly noises. So you can see why they’re not my favorite performers. I do like Kim’s spooky, haunting moan of a voice—what’s not to like?—and those songs of theirs that highlight it and are more melodic. But yeah, I know, faint praise.

My main memory of having gone to see them in concert (I think it was at the Masonic?) sometime around 1992 or ‘93 was of not recognizing any of their songs and being bored. Oh, and their “opening band” was Ciccone Youth, which was an experimental band composed of… the members of Sonic Youth. The friends I attended with thought this was clever and witty of them. I’ll take their word for it.

Fast forward to 2018. Kim Gordon has published her memoir (in 2015), which I’ve bought for my partner; he has read it and enjoyed it very much. But then, he’s a fan of the band; I had no desire to read it myself. Then in early 2018 I learned that Kim Gordon and Chris Kraus (the author of I Love Dick, the book upon which the sadly short-lived TV series was based) were going to be interviewed together at City Arts and Lectures. This was obviously a perfect birthday present for my partner, so I bought the tickets and we went.

And I learned that Kim Gordon is affectless and somewhat inarticulate, especially as compared to Chris Kraus. She also came across as somewhat self-absorbed and self-important. So, okay. Not impressed.

Why did I finally decide to read the book? I think it came down to having attempted and failed to read three fiction books in a row—I didn’t even get through the first chapter of two of them. Having failed to get through a vampire novel and two different sorts of speculative fiction, I decided I needed something based in the real world. Not even realistic fiction, but nonfiction. And I came across Girl in a Band on my Libby app and basically thought, well, what have I got to lose? So I started it.

Right away I was struck, as I had been during the interview, by her affectless, flat voice. But as she talked about her childhood in Southern California and her relationship with her more-than-difficult brother, I began to understand why she talked that way. I won’t spoil it, but there’s a reason for it. She opens up in this book  as she takes you on a journey through her life, and although I still find her self-important, I also see her as strong-willed, creative, independent, and admirable. The kind of self-important she is is the kind she needs to be, as a person and as an artist, and I’m no longer put off by it.

I do wish she had gone into more detail about the earlier, better days of her relationship with Thurston Moore, but I can see why that would have been painful for her. And the audiobook version really missed an opportunity—there’s a long section where Gordon talks about a number of different songs and her memories relating to them, and it would have been great, especially for someone like me who isn’t especially familiar with the band’s oeuvre, to have heard the song in conjunction with the narration.

But overall, the book is well-written in a quirky, somewhat choppy way, and I’m glad I got to know her just a bit. Verdict: if you like memoirs or are a fan of the band, read it. You'll discover a person worth knowing about.

I'm still not a fan of the band, though.

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

read by Chris Patton

I so wanted to get into this book. This was my second time through it, my first having been in the early-to-mid Aughts after a friend who is a horror fan (and now a horror writer—hi, Ben!) loaned it to me. Actually, he first loaned me another book of hers, Drawing Blood, and although I’m not generally a tremendous horror fan myself, I loved it. I remember not loving this one quite as much, but still, I got into it. It was a vampire book from, in part, the point of view of the vampires, after all; and it took place, in part, in New Orleans. I’m a complete sucker for all of that.

Not so much this time, though. Drawing Blood stands the test of time by being charmingly time-capsule-like. Lost Souls, though, fails the same test by charmlessly and blatantly pandering to the sensibilities of the horror-goth kids of the 90s, mindlessly repeating Anne Rice-esque tropes while splattering gratuitous gore everywhere. Sad to say, I didn’t even make it all the way through this time around.

It starts sometime in the late 70s or very early 80s. A very old vampire named Christian runs a bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans and notices a young girl spending a lot of time there. She believes there are vampires and is hoping to meet some there, in hopes of becoming one herself—though why she should believe this and why she should suspect they hang out at this bar is never explained. She’s more right than she knows, but our barkeep never reveals himself to her. And she’s wrong about one critical thing: in this reality, vampires are born, not made. So even if she does find the beings she seeks, it won’t do her any good.

In fact she does end up meeting some, and it does her much worse than “not any good.” Three old vampire friends of Christian’s roll into town for a visit and end up partying with the girl and impregnating her before taking off for the next chapter of their monotonously rollicking life on the road. After that Christian takes her in, giving her work at the bar and letting her live with him--but never bothering to explain that all vampire pregnancies end in the death of the mother, as the infant invariably eats its way out.

This takes place, and Christian disposes of the body very dispassionately and then drives up north and leaves the infant on a random doorstep with a note pinned to it. In the note he says that the baby’s name is Nothing and that he’ll bring luck to those who raise him.

So that’s all setup. Nothing grows up to be a teenaged psychopath—actually all the vampires pretty much act like teenaged psychopaths, aside from Christian, who acts like a tired old psychopath—and runs away from home and toward an inevitable encounter with his vampire dad and cohort, and also with the two main human characters.

These are Ghost and Steve. They are two young men from a small rural town called Missing Mile, North Carolina, which is also where much of Drawing Blood takes place. Ghost is a spooky kid who has visions. His best friend, roommate, and bandmate is Steve, a self-absorbed rapist. Both are bisexual—seemingly everyone in this book is bisexual—but they don’t appear to be lovers, just very close friends.  Their band, Lost Souls, gives the book its name and provides the plot device that brings the two of them and all the vampires and Steve’s ex-girlfriend and rape victim, Ann, onto a collision course.

Nothing and his father, Zillah, become lovers and then discover their relationship—which delights them both and cements their union, with Zillah becoming fixatedly possessive and Nothing becoming fixatedly dependent. Zillah impregnates Ann and takes off for New Orleans. Ann becomes fixated on Zillah and decides to follow him there, and Ghost decides to follow her and try to save her. This was the point at which I stopped caring about what happened to any of these crazy and painfully improbably people and stopped reading.

If this is the sort of book you like, you’ll really like this book. A lot of people do.

How to Be Famous by Caitlin Moran

read by Louise Brealey

Such a good book. I couldn’t get over how good this book was the whole time I was reading it—and that was after thoroughly enjoying How to Build a Girl. I laughed out loud so many times, I had to think twice about reading it in public. There was one, comparing a man’s parts to a turnstile, that was so good that I had to call my partner and repeat it to him and laugh all over again.

First off: no, you don’t have to have read How to Build a Girl to enjoy this book… but it would probably help. If you haven’t already, I recommend it. It’s a terrific book in itself and I’ve already reviewed it on this blog.

Second: if swearing, casual drug use, excessive drinking, and frank discussions of sex that don’t mince words aren’t your bag, this is not the book for you.

Now that’s out of the way, let me tell you a bit more about this fabulous book. It’s about Johanna Morrigan (AKA Dolly Wilde) again, but now it’s 1994. She’s 19, living in London, and a successful writer. She’s still desperately in love with John Kite, and he still doesn’t return her affections, but never mind: she has a plan. She’s going to write him into being in love with her.

Along the way, she’ll have to somehow get her marijuana-addled dad to move out of her flat, teach John to value his teen girl fans, and—and this is the whopper—decide what to do about being very publicly slut-shamed by the entire London music scene after a disastrous encounter with a Famous.

This is How to Build a Girl for the #metoo era. Tremendous fun. Read it!