“The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization…estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases - more than transportation does.”
Despite the Western media’s current focus on global warming, and the need to change the way people consume, few commentators have dared to challenge meat consumption. And yet it is one of the principal causes of environmental damage. The consequences are shocking:
“Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.”
I’ve come across an advanced reader’s copy of Philip Roth’s forthcoming novel Indignation. The book is not due for publication until September 16. Here is, as far as I know, the first extended review to appear online. Spoilers included.
In 1962 the New Yorker published a Philip Roth story called ‘Novotny’s Pain’. It was included (revised) in the now out-of-print Philip Roth Reader, but has been excluded from the ostensibly canonical Library of America series. This quiet but compelling story concerns a young soldier’s possibly psychosomatic back pain while dreading combat duty in Korea.
Indignation, a story of sexual survelliance in God-fearing America, revisits the same war and the same fear. Fear, in fact, underlies the actions of nearly every character. The prospect of a bloody death on the Korean battlefield motivates Marcus Messner’s severe academic discipline; by staying in college he can avoid the draft. Fear for Marcus’s safety puts Marcus’s father, a kosher butcher, in a state of paranoia and mounting rage. To escape his father, Marcus transfers from a local college in Newark to distant Winesburg College (I haven’t read Sherwood Anderson’s story cycle Winesburg, Ohio, so I don’t know what led Roth to borrow the setting for his book). For some reason Roth skips the potentially fiery scene of Marcus telling his father he is leaving Newark; it is also not very believable that the obsessively protective Mr Messner would allow his son to flee. Marcus, in Winesburg, nevertheless continues to enjoy the financial support of his parents.
Roth employs the unusual technique of letting Marcus narrate his story from death, while “lurking disembodied” in a “memory grotto.” Marcus is another “prudent, responsible, diligent, hardworking A student” in the Roth universe. He is perhaps the most sensible of Roth’s protagonists, not at all interested in transgression. Even forbidden sex is not really sought; it falls into his lap, so to speak, when a college girl named Olivia Hutton surprises him with fellatio in a parked LaSalle. She performs the act with “diligence [that word again!] and concentration.” Marcus is a nice young man who had little to rebel against in Newark; he has a mother whose “bedrock dependability, whose sensible words and coherent thoughts, had filled me with confidence throughout a childhood that was unembattled.” Roth loves to mass the adjectives of virtue, in anticipation of whatever unjust shitstorm is to follow, but I’m tired of reading the same ones in every new book. They blur the characters into indistinct types rather than make them come alive.
At Winesburg Marcus has trouble with his roommates. The first is a noisy homosexual Jewish bohemian, the second a humourless gentile. He goes to live alone in an abandoned and uncomfortable room. There is institutionalised anti-semitism in the form of exclusive fraternities and compulsory chapel attendance. The gripping centrepiece of the novel is an argument in the office of Dean Hawes D. Caudwell. The ever-serious Marcus is questioned on his failure to socialise and to seek spiritual sustenance in chapel. Marcus asserts his right to privacy and his admiration of Bertrand Russell, whose ‘Why I Am Not A Christian’ he paraphrases at length. “Rationalist blasphemies,” responds Caudwell, “spouted by an immoralist.” Marcus, a high school debater, cannot resist declaring this a worthless ad hominem attack. The scene concludes with Marcus throwing up over Caudwell’s desk.
Obstacles to free and guiltless sex are often the spark to fire the indignation of Roth’s extremely serious men - we see it as far back as Goodbye, Columbus (1959). The sexual mores of Winesburg College in 1951 are far removed from contemporary American life. Young women must sign in and out of their dormitories. Curfews are enforced. Police cars patrol for lovemakers in the alleyway behind the local inn and on the outskirts of the town cemetery. The men suffer “the searing, stabbing, cramping pain of the widespread testicular torture known as blue balls.” The eventual, and perhaps inevitable, eruption of frat boy misbehaviour on a snowy night prompts the college president, a Red-baiting Republican politician, to denounce the male students. Marcus reflects that “President Lentz had pronounced the words ‘thoughtless fun’ as scornfully as if they were a synonym for ‘premeditated murder’.”
Olivia Hutton is a remarkable character in this environment. She is sexually confident and very easygoing - after a hospital room handjob she quotes Longfellow’s “I shot an arrow into the air/It fell to earth I knew not where” - and defies the standards of “proper” behaviour. Another of her dates declares her “The Blowjob Queen of 1951.” Marcus is initially too naive to understand her liberated attitude. Women are not thought of as having such a thing as sexual desire. Perhaps it has something to do with her being the daughter of divorced parents? She is like a transplant from a different time and place. But ultimately we get too little of Olivia in this short book, mere hints at her history (scars on her wrists, electro-shock treatment) when she seems to merit much more attention as Marcus’s accomplice in a tiny sexual rebellion.
“History is not the background - history is the stage!” cries President Lentz. He is talking about the fight against “godless Soviet Communism,” but in a way this novel, like the second Zuckerman trilogy of the late nineties, dramatises the powerlessness of individuals to escape the wave of history, and the power of politics to destroy lives. Indignation is a sad and bloody book, and even if it delivers nothing particularly new - indeed, most of Roth’s books could be retitled Indignation - it is a fine supplement to Roth’s late achievements. And we learn a lot about kosher butchery.
Below are a few relevant articles on the Australian Government’s intervention against Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. The policy was presented as a drastic measure to prevent sexual abuse of children in Aboriginal communities. Then Prime Minister John Howard announced it a year ago; his successor Kevin Rudd has continued the policy with little amendment. It is a crucial responsibility of society to protect children from abuse, but this intervention - at the cost of a gross attack on civil liberties - does not seem to be succeeding.
It is the responsibility of Australia as a nation to lift the basic living standards of indigenous people to that of enjoyed by the rest of the country. Aboriginal communities suffer immense social disadvantage. It is the most entrenched problem in Australian society. It should be the source of our greatest shame. Too little has been done to tackle this problem. Decades roll on and the problems endure.
Rudd’s support for the intervention both before and after the election is despairing to those who hoped for genuine progress after his apology to the stolen generation.
At ABC News on June 20 a report that the Northern Territory’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Tony Fitzgerald has called on Govt to abandon NT intervention
“Fitzgerald says the intervention has caused confusion, unfairness and inconvenience in remote Territory communities.
“He is critical of the one-off, short-term health checks and income quarantining measures, and says the suspension of the Northern Territory and Federal race discrimination legislation can never be justified.
“Meanwhile, the head of the Northern Territory branch of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) says he does not know of any cases of child sexual abuse that have been uncovered by the medical checks introduced as part of the federal intervention.”
The music Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys recorded after the failed Smile project - I’m talking about records released between 1968 and 1973 - has been long misunderstood, ignored, or dismissed. The standard narrative is that Brian, after the triumphs of Pet Sounds and ‘Good Vibrations’, burnt out creatively and mentally trying to complete Smile; his fellow Beach Boys slapped together a stoner substitute called Smiley Smile; the band cemented their cultural irrelevance by withdrawing from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. “You’ll never have to hear surf music again,” mumbled Jimi Hendrix on ‘Third Stone From The Sun’.
Hendrix’s forecast might have proved correct (although by now the Beach Boys were not creating much ’surf music’). A succession of Beach Boys albums and singles failed to sell. It looked as though their prominence in the American popular music scene had passed forever. Of course the band eventually reclaimed their popularity with the oldies surf music compilation Endless Summer in 1974 and, under the leadership of Mike Love and with the occasional participation of the disturbed Brian Wilson, became a touring surf music jukebox of increasingly diminishing returns (It never ends: in a few weeks the Mike Love/Bruce Johnson band masquerading as ‘The Beach Boys’ will begin their 2008 summer tour at the Hilton in Atlantic City, NJ).
But let’s look back to that period of commercial failure. Smiley Smile was followed by Wild Honey (1967), Friends (1968), 20/20 (1969), Sunflower (1971), Surf’s Up (1972), Carl and the Passions - So Tough (1972) and Holland (1973). There were also two concert albums, Live in London (1968, released 1970) and In Concert (1973).
These records contain some of the band’s very best music. In contrast to the total authority Brian Wilson exercised on Pet Sounds, his songwriting and production contributions in this era tended towards collaboration. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The band had a lot to offer beyond flawless harmonies. Carl and Dennis Wilson, in particular, emerged from Brian’s shadow to create their own classic songs.
The surf and hot rod mythology of the early Beach Boys records was superceded, temporarily, by other concerns. Peter Ames Carlin in Catch A Wave: The Rise, Fall & Redemption of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson (Rodale, 2006) writes of Brian’s mindset post-Smile:
His psyche battered by its most recent journey into the wilderness, now Brian (often writing with the assistance of Mike and sometimes combinations of other bandmates) looked for transcendence in the textures of the natural world and the simple, homey life unfolding beneath its bowers.
…
What begins to emerge in this period - which extends into 1968’s Friends with songs such as ‘Wake The World’, then on through ‘Cool Cool Water’ and another bird song, ‘At My Window’ - is an awe for the natural world that echoes ideals that found their first voice with the transcendentalists of the mid-nineteenth century. For like Thoreau at Walden Pond, Brian and, to an extent, the other Beach Boys created a vision of life in which beauty (interpreted perhaps as the presence of God or a connection to the sacred) becomes most vivid in the absence of the usual clamor of life.
…
And though this lyrical pose often put the group’s music at odds with the reality of their own lives, it’s the same contradiction that lurked beneath the Beach Boys when they were nonsurfers who just happened to be the nation’s most successful purveyors of songs about surfing. What also remained consistent was the yearning that fired their dreams. For even if they couldn’t quite attain the simple happiness they described, there was nothing phony about the desperation that animated their fantasies.
Friends is perhaps the best expression of this appealing, idealistic yearning: a pastoral song cycle about nature, romantic love, and having kids. The mood is gentle, celebratory, and funny. The lyrics are simple and optimistic:
“We’ve been friends now for so many years
We’ve been together through the good times and the tears
Dim dipple ee dim dipple ay dim dipple oo dim dee aye oh.”
(’Friends’)
“Wake the world with a brand new morning
Say hello to another fine morning
Got my face in the running water
Making my life so much brighter now.”
(’Wake The World’)
“Little bird up in a tree
Looked down a sang a song to me
The trout in a shiny brook
Gave the worm another look
And told me not to worry about my life.”
(’Little Bird’)
“Again at the park on a nice summer day
High up above me the trees gently sway
A bird flew away and I went to sleep.”
(’I Went To Sleep’)
Who would guess that Dennis Wilson befriended Charles Manson during the sessions for this pacifistic album?
Here are some clips. First up is a promo film for the ‘Friends’ single featuring the band (without Brian):
Carl in a promo film for ‘Wake The World’ - out in the snow:
Here is ‘Busy Doin’ Nothin” illustrated with some stills of Brian:
‘With Me Tonight’ (a Smiley Smile track):
And here is ‘Time to Get Alone’ (a 20/20 track) illustrated with various stills:
A few years ago I tried to improve on what I considered the flaws and missed opportunities of the original LP by reprogramming the album for CD-R. I dispensed with ‘Diamond Head’ and ‘Transcendental Meditation’ - two pieces that seemed anomalous - and borrowed a few tracks from the other late 60s albums that fit right into the mood (’Time To Get Alone’ is surely one of Brian’s great near-forgotten songs). The track order roughly reflects a day in this pastoral life, from morning to night. Create a mix-tape or MP3 playlist and listen to how it works as a whole.
Meant For You
Friends
Wake The World
Be Here In The Morning
Busy Doin’ Nothin’
I’d Love Just Once To See You*
When A Man Needs A Woman
Passing By
Let The Wind Blow**
Anna Lee, The Healer
Little Bird
Be Still
With Me Tonight#
Time To Get Alone+
I Went to Sleep+
* from Wild Honey
** from Wild Honey; but the best available version is the stereo remix from Hawthorne, California
# from Smiley Smile
+ from 20/20
I’ve always felt that one of Brian Wilson’s greatest talents is orchestration. This revised Friends is a fine example of his art, with idiosyncrasies unique to the period (the album was partially recording inside Brian’s Bel Air home). Somebody’s out-of-tune honky tonk piano is used often: listen to its juxtaposition with the bass guitar at the beginning of ‘Let The Wind Blow’. ‘Wake The World’ is centred around a bass line, with support from the piano, some sort of organ, strings, tuba, and drums. ‘Busy Doin’ Nothin”, a bossa nova about Brian’s procrastination, plays off an acoustic rhythm guitar with the dense chords of the woodwind ensemble (a range of clarinets and flutes). The music is never aggressive; Brian’s orchestration of Friends is in perfect consonance with its outlook.
This venture into Californian pastoral had no success in the U.S. at the time of release (a peak at #126 on the charts), but deserves re-appraisal. It is, after all, Brian Wilson’s personal favourite.
[This post is illustrated with stills from Eric Rohmer's La Collectionneuse (1967) available at the Movie Screenshots Blog. I originally posted on the subject of my revised Friends on the Cabinessence message board back in December 2007.]
(2005 Photograph by Stephanie Berger from The New York Times)
Tonight I saw and heard Sonny Rollins at the Sydney Opera House. Aged 77, he is in superb form, his playing not markedly less impressive than in his early days as the Saxophone Colossus.
His band consists of long-time collaborator Bob Cranshaw (bass), Clifton Anderson (Trombone), Bobby Broom (guitar), Kimati Dinizulu (percussion), and Kobie Watkins (drums).
This was Sonny’s first performance in Australia. It was received with tremendous enthusiasm by a full house. Let’s hope he comes back soon.
UPDATE: Sonny Rollins appeared on ABC-TV Australia’s The 7.30 Report the day after the concert. Watch the extended version of the interview HERE
Here are some vintage Sonny performance clips.
(’Four’ live in Denmark 1968)
(’G-Man’ (in two parts) live in Saugerties, New York circa 1986, from the film Saxophone Colossus)
Matthew Asprey is a writer from Sydney, Australia. He teaches creative writing at Macquarie University.
Some of his short fiction is available at his website
This blog surveys books, politics, cinema, music and contemporary life in Australia.
Honey For The Bears is the title of a 1963 novel by Anthony Burgess.
The header image is a detail from the cover of Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers's Free For All (Blue Note, 1964). Photo by Francis Wolff, Design by Reid Miles.
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