All the Light We Cannot See a Radiant Triumph

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All the Light We Cannot See (2104)

Anthony Doerr

Scribner's, 531 pp. ISBN: 1476746583

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I am being neither glib nor histrionic when I proclaim Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See a transcendent novel. Any discussion of best novels of 2014 that does not include this book is that of the unenlightened conversing in the dark.

Doerr's masterful tale is set in Saint-Malo during the 1944 D-Day invasion of France. Through flashback and fast forward techniques we relive the fall of France to the Nazis, the inner workings of the French Resistance, how children lost their innocence, liberation, and the myriad cruelties and acts of small kindness that take place in a land under siege. Above all, it is true to its title–it's about ways of seeing and not seeing. The book is populated by colorful characters, but it settles upon two major ones: Werner Pfenning, a German orphan boy whose technical brilliance saves him from toiling in the Essen coal mines, but sucks him into the Wermacht; and Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French teen.

Werner's facility with radios frees him from an orphanage, a facility from which he hopes also to redeem his younger sister, Jutta. In the Germany of the late 1930s, such hopes mean obedience to the State. Werner observes the cruelty of the Nazi regime, but must remain silent and choose not to see its immoral implications if he hopes to save Jutta. He must also bit his lip during Hitler Youth training in which his best friend, Frederick, is brutalized. What he can see its circuits, schematics, and electrical currents. At his special school he dutifully studies theory and trigonometry, but he's good at triangulating radio signals and uncovering hidden transmitters because he sees in his mind how everything connects. He also envisions enemy antennae before physically observing them.

Marie-Laure–as beautifully realized a character as one can imagine–sees in other ways. He father and caretaker, Daniel, is a locksmith for the Natural History Museum in Paris. He's also a master woodworker who constructs scale models of Marie-Laure's neighborhood that she "reads" through her fingers with the facility with which she reads Braille. Daniel also constructs elaborate wooden puzzles that Marie-Laure must solve and soon she is so good at cracking his mechanical conundrums that her fingers move with the grace of a concert pianist and the speed of a safecracker. When Daniel is entrusted with being one of four couriers for what might be a precious gem or might be one of three fakes designed to lead Nazi looters astray, he and Marie-Laure leave Paris for her Uncle Etienne's home in Saint-Malo. Marie-Laure must learn anew how to negotiate her way through streets–this time the maze-like warren of walled Saint-Malo.

One by one those close to her disappear until she begins to feel her kinship with a creature she "sees" on the beach, a blind snail species whose shell and chamber she knows as well as her own room, her well-fingered copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and her Uncle Etienne's hidden garret chamber with its transmitter. Trips to the Madame Ruelle's bakery to buy "an ordinary loaf" of bread come with coded numbers baked into the loaf. When all other couriers are removed, Saint-Malo's fate depends upon a blind girl wending her way through the city streets. And why not? In her darkness Marie-Laure sees things the sighted can never behold.

Intricate subplots overlay the inner struggles of Werner and Marie-Laure, such as the Inspector Girard-like pursuit of the missing gem by the sadistic Reinhold von Rumpel, Marie-Laure's relationship with her uncle's maternal housekeeper, Werner's moral crises and redemption, and small acts of rebellion by Occupied French women the likes of which seldom make the history books (but should). Doerr also gets an essential fact about war– fairy tale endings are the stuff of bad novels, not actual conflict. The resolution of this novel will both satisfy and leave you shattered; it both soars and scars. If I may, this book makes us see in a different light. –Rob Weir

Grace & Tony Making Beautiful Music Together

GRACE & TONY

November

Rock Ridge Music 2-61397

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It's an old story–two people from different genres meet, fall in love, marry, and decide to make beautiful music together literally as well as figuratively. Grace Shultz was a bluegrass musician; Tony White was a punk rocker. Together they're making folk-styled Country music with all sorts of other stuff thrown in. November wasn't a huge jump for White, whose brother was one half of The Civil Wars. But don't expect a Civil Wars clone from Grace & Tony–his voice is much grittier than his brother's, and Grace eschews the fragility and angelic tone of Joy Williams in favor of twang and verve. As befits a former punk rocker like White, though, some of the material veers toward darker subjects–murder, addiction, and love gone wrong. That said, their love duet to each other, "Hey Grace, HeyTony" is joyful place where honky tonk intersects with sunny pop. "From Me to You" is another one on the sweet side. The rest is a mélange. "Grassphemy" is one of several songs in which old-time music sashays to the edge of grunge cacophony and makes its way home through better harmonies than most punk bands ever managed. There are also several selections–"Chameleon" and "La Carrera"– that blend the sensibilities of 1930s cowboy/Western music with what the duo calls "punkgrass." Think a meeting between Buck Page's Riders of the Purple Sage and The Ramones. There's even a splash of politics, "Electricity Bomb," a post-global warming ditty as it might have been sung during the 1950s Folk Revival. If you like your music eclectic, non-electric, and a little bit eccentric, November will warm your autumn soul. –Rob Weir

PS--Gotta love the bowtie/ear plugs combo on Tony in the above video link. That's a new one for me. 

How to Fix the Yankees

Derek Jeter just played his final home game and after three in Boston, Jeter-Haters can crawl back in their holes for five years and emerge to argue that the man with the sixth most hits in MLB history doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame.

The New York Yankees have a much bigger problem than replacing Jeter in 2015. This is the second straight year the Yankees won't be playing into October and Yankees' fans should chill as it's going to take some time to fix a team a tune-up won't fix–it needs an overhaul.

What to Keep:

1. Joe Girardi:  It is a testament to his managerial skills that the Yankees remained in the thick of things in both 2013 and 2014. A lesser manager–Bobby Valentine anyone?–would be looking up from the basement. Girardi is goofy looking and unassuming, but he gets a lot of mileage out of Yugos.

2. Dellin Betances: He looks to be the next coming of Mariano. Maybe he won't be, but he's good enough that the Yankees won't have to overpay David Robertson.

3. Shane Greene was a pleasant surprise and is just 25. He won't be an ace, but he'll be superb as a number 3 or 4. Michael Pineda is your #2 and even though he's been injury-prone he's still just 25 years-old.

4. Masashiro Tanaka is worth every dime the Yankees paid to get him if stays healthy. If not, he's unmoveable, so pencil him in every five days.  

5. The pitching was much better than anyone predicted when four of the top five went on the DL. Brandon McCarthy should be retained–if he'll sign for #4 money. If his agent talks like he's a #2, say thanks for the memories. I'd also throw another contract at Hiroki Kuroda, though word has it he's retiring. If that happens, pray Ivan Nova recovers from Tommy John surgery quickly and that C. C. Sabathia can at least pitch like a #3.

6. The everyday lineup flat-out sucks. Brett Gardner deserves to stay; Mark Teixeira will because no one is going to take on his contract given his injury history. I still think Brian McCann will end up being a good signing and figure out the AL. If they don't ask for the moon and half the solar system, both Chase Headley and Martin Prado are useful.  There are some young outfielders in the minors, but I'd pencil in Chris Young as the backup.

What to Dump:

1. Brian Cashman has been a great GM, but he's an old-style thinker has simply overstayed his welcome. The primary thing the Yankees need to do is sign players who will be good, not ones that once were. Not all of the bad contracts have been Cashman's fault, but he's been lousy at getting top players to come to New York and has overpaid over-the-hill talent out of desperation. And we must ask: who'd you rather overpay, Robbie Cano for ten years or Jacoby Ellsbury for seven?

2. The minor league system needs a complete remake. David Robertson was the last proven player to come through the ranks and that's unacceptable.

3. I don't care how highly regarded he is, when a team hits as poorly as the Yankees, hitting coach Kevin Long has to go.

4. Just cut A-Rod. Let him take his sorry steroid-pumped butt elsewhere. The Yankees will end up paying for him one way or the other, so make it far from clubhouse harm.

5. Aside from perhaps Preston Claiborne, who pitches well though the scouts don't like him, every bullpen role player is expendable–especially the lefties. Enough with the friggin' "lefty specialists;" a southpaw that can't get out right-handers as well is a roster clogger. I think we've seen Adam Warren's best. Trade him when his value is highest. Say goodbye to Chris Capuano–please!

6. Move Frankie Cervelli and make J. R. Murphy the backup catcher. Cervelli is the backstop version of Nick Johnson, so get some low-level prospects for him so he be on someone else's DL.

7. Now the hard part. We need to see if these guys can play: Jose Pirela and Rob Refsnyder. We know these guys can't: Stephen Drew (who ought to sue Scott Boras) and Brendan Ryan. All you UZR guys can go to hell–Ryan's glove isn't good enough to compensate for a sub .200 batting average.  

8. Even harder: Even if you have to eat some of his contract, move Carlos Beltran and get prospects for him. He's yesterday's news and was a horrible (and desperate) signing.

9. Controversial: I am not a Jacoby Ellsbury fan. He's Gardner with more power, but a worse arm. If the Yankees can move him and get value back, sayonara. I'd rather see the Yankees throw dumb money at Nelson Cruz or Cuban prospect Yasman Tomas.  

10. More controversial still: Stay away from free agency, admit that 2015 will be challenging, and wait for the kids on the verge: pitchers Luis Severino, Ian Clarkin, and Jacob Lindgren; catcher Gary Sanchez; and position players Aaron Judge, Eric Jagielo, and Jake Cave. Accept that attendance will drop 20%, shave payroll, and do that most un-Yankee thing: wait. 

As Long at CT Exists, MA Drivers are Not New Engalnd's Worst

If you see a plate like this--run away!

On the way home from Pennsylvania yesterday I did something I almost never do: drive through Connecticut. Massachusetts drivers have a deserved reputation for idiocy on the highways and byways, but as long as Connecticut remains a New England state, the "Massholes" of legend will never sink lower than being the second worst drivers in the Northeast. You should indeed quake when spotting Massachusetts tags, but you should flee in terror if you see those sky blue Connecticut plates.

Mass drivers are sometimes idiots of the first magnitude–prone to doing things such as imagining that a six-foot-wide SUV stopped fifty yards from the right-hand turn lane can easily squeeze through a three-foot space left by a line of parked cars. No MA driver ever has more than one hand on the wheel–the other must, by custom, be thrust out the driver's side window into the air with middle digit extended. That's done either to determine wind velocity or out of sheer frustration that the car in front refuses to believe that a six-foot wide car can't fit through the three-foot space. Those are the real reasons; do not believe the folktale that the driver is gesticulating because he's furious that someone has usurped his right to be the biggest moron on the macadam.

Still, MA drivers are like little old ladies on their way to an antiwar protest in comparison to those Nutmeg Nightmares to the south. Driving through Connecticut is like being in a perpetual motion three-lane parking lot–minimum speed 75. Earlier on Sunday there was a rumor that a stretch of 1-84 had enough space between cars that it was possible to read the bumper stickers of vehicles two car-lengths in front. A dozen cars were dispatched to the scene and immediately spun off the road into a patch of ornamental grass. That's called "parking" in Connecticut and seems to involve about 10% of all vehicles in the state, with another 15% preferring to come to rest in the median strip.

One also observes that the average Connecticut driver lives in mortal fear that he or she will accidentally use the turn signals. They never use their blinkers, the only exception being if they intend to exit a highway–in which case they turn on their signals seven to ten miles in advance. It is also apparent that the state could save a lot of money simply by not repainting lane markers. There are no lanes in Connecticut, nor is it expected that anyone would deign to look before darting in front of another vehicle. It's caveat auriga–let the driver beware–in the state that put the nut back into nutmeg. Connecticut motorists like to reinforce that value by randomly weaving like a drunken crotchetier working on an ugly afghan.

Insofar as we can tell, there are several other state standards that would be considered bad form or felonies in other places. Passing on the left is for sissies–one should always pass on the right, using the shoulder if necessary. Extra points for taking out sections of the guardrail. Tossing fast food containers onto the highway surface is acceptable if you are going at a high rate of speed and driving erratically at the time. Towing or stowing unstable cargo such as log splitters, homemade campers with mismatched wheel sizes, used mattresses, or junk-laden carts is perfectly peachy as long as the load is not secure, there are no annoying red flags attached, and absolutely no brake lights or turn signals are connected. It is considered gauche to slow down in construction zones, or to pay the slightest attention to those signs that say that fines are doubled in safety corridors. State Motto: Hah! You'd have to catch me first copper! Speaking of which, by our estimate there are just eleven traffic cops in Connecticut, none of whom has ever had the audacity to issue a ticket to a truck driver. Or to any driver sporting those frightful sky blue plates.

Do you need to get anywhere west of Danbury? Do what any sane person would do–take the Mass Pike to the New York state line, pay 35 cents for the short stretch that takes you to the Taconic State Parkway, and proceed south until you connect to I-84 a good half hour west of Connecticut. If you see any Massachusetts plates, honk, and wave. You've nothing to fear from them–they're just jerks; Nutmeggers are malevolent from the grill to the muffler.   

Nora Jane Struthers Takes Us Back to Old Country

NORA JANE STRUTHERS & THE PARTY LINE

Country Carnival Pack

Norajanestruthers.com

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Are you sick of Country music that sounds like that slick 1980s pop-rock genre called “New Country?” Are you ready for some Old Country? The kind where pedal steel wails, voices keen, and fiddles fly during the breakouts? Check out the latest EP from the angelic Nora Jane Struthers, who might just have the most gorgeous voice since Lori McKenna broke through. Country Pack is a sampler from her 2013 release Carnival with a few other tracks thrown in; including her killer cover of “Till I Kissed You,” an Everly Brothers classic. It’s typical of Struthers’ approach­--a vintage piece or rockabilly, complete with strong walking bass lines from Brian Duncan and gorgeous close harmony singing with Joe Overton. The latter also plays banjo, as we hear on "Party Line," the song for which the band is named. Overton also hews more to tradition than to innovation. Not that there’s anything wrong with Bela Fleck-like artistic improv, but if you want to induce the feeling of coal dust Appalachia, Overton’s is the better musical frame.

I have read that Ms. Struthers is a fan of vintage clothing as well as retro music. It is, of course, a risk to turn back the clock, but Struthers and her band are not a Country version of Sha Na Na. Quite the opposite. Her Appalachian-style tunes sound stump-water genuine, her bluegrass selections evoke backwoods creeks, and her honky-tonk conjures the smell of stale beer rather than overpriced Chardonnay. On "Carnival" we rekindle the sense of wonderment from a country fair and that whirl of energy we associate with simpler times. This is Country-folk music that’s about love gone wrong, hope, hard times, simple things, the road, and the cabin. "Must Have Been Out of Mind" feels like what you'd get if you crossed heartbreak Country with gospel music.  Each track manages to be complex musically without overwhelming Struthers’ voice or resorting to studio chicanery. Loved it! –Rob Weir

Check this track on YouTube.

Another Conjob Conflab over Con-flag

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I waited to comment on a Washington Post story from August concerning a band of Virginia rednecks causing still another conflab over one of the biggest con jobs of all time: the so-called Confederate flag–though it's actually no such thing. The Virginia Flaggers hoisted a 30' by 22' Confederate battle flag along a busy Virginia highway. They call themselves "activists," though a different word beginning with "a" comes to mind.

Did I wait because I was too angry? Because the issue is too delicate? Because I didn't wanted to offend people from the South? Nope. I waited because this is what journalists call an "evergreen" story–one you can run any old time because it's always ripe. There's never a shortage of racists who wave the Stars and Bars and claim it's about Southern pride and has nothing to do with race. They know damn well they're being provocative, so they hide behind an artificial heritage hedge, and play wounded when anyone calls them out.  

I'll give the Virginia Flaggers grudging credit for riding the Zeitgeist Hogwash Loader. One of their spokesmen, with a Visine-aided tear in his eye, spoke of a broken heart as he considered that unknown, unburied soldiers might be lying on the very site upon which the flag is raised. One might note that's an appropriate fate for traitors, but I'd rather address historical ignorance.  

I sometimes see Con-flag T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan: "If this shirt offends you you need a history lesson." Sorry, but if you wear such a shirt, you're the one in need of a history lesson. (You also need a grammar lesson to brush up on comma usage.) The first Confederate flag was a single white star against a field of blue, known in parlance and song as the "Bonnie Blue Flag." The one called the "Stars and Bars" wasn't adopted until May of 1863 and it wasn't the one "heritage" abusers call the "Stars and Bars." The first Confederate States of America bannerol looked like the U.S. flag, albeit with fewer stars and just three broad stripes of red, white, and red. The design today's good old boys love was actually the battle flag of the Army of Tennessee or, in square form, the Army of Northern Virginia. In 1863, it made its way onto the official flag on one of the uglier designs in flag history: an undersized perversion of Scotland's St. Andrew's Cross on a white background. It looked like an envelop stamped on the wrong side.  

Once the Civil War war ended–a struggle to preserve the Union and end slavery, by the way, not malarkey over state's rights, the tariff, or Northern aggression–all the flags were closeted away. Occasionally they came out for Civil War reunions, but they didn't fly over state capitols until later. They came out again when Southerners fought and (eventually) lost another war–the one against civil rights. Defenders can cry "heritage" until the kudzu comes home, but that shameful blue and red rag is indeed  a racist symbol.  

As with most heritage claims, it's important to ask when a symbol becomes "heritage" and who is pushing that agenda. The second part is easy: white groups such as the Sons of the Confederacy and the United Daughters of the Confederacy pedaled a load of ideological hooey known as the Lost Cause during Reconstruction (1866-1876) that sought to transform treason into a noble quest. Alas, they were somewhat successful. Once Reconstruction ended and the Jim Crow era began, it was okay to be racist again. In 1894, Mississippi added the battle flag to its state flag because the white folks in the blackest state in the Union didn't want black folks doing radical stuff like voting, holding political office, or thinking they might be first-class citizens. Not to be outdone, Alabama modified its state banner to allude to the battle flag in 1895–just in time for the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 that shamefully gave the stamp of constitutionality to segregation. Florida altered its flag in 1900.

2003 in GA

Lest you think this was just the times, consider what happened when the times they were a changing. Southern Dixiecrats throughout the South dusted off the battle flag during the 1950s for the sole purpose of symbolizing their opposition to civil rights. Georgia put the starry cross on its flag in 1956! Think Brown v. the Board of Education or the rising civil rights movement may have had anything to do with that? When Governor Zell Miller tried to alter the design in 1993, the legislature voted him down. When those white peachy Georgians finally altered their flag in 2003, they sewed the controversy right back into it.

Most egregious of all, South Carolina waited until 1962 to start flying the self-proclaimed Rebel flag from its capitol dome. I'm sure that decision had nothing to do with the sit-down movement or the Freedom Rides, right? Know when it came down? In 2000, and only then because a four-year boycott knocked the wind out of the tourist industry. It still flies beside a monument to the Confederate war dead on the capitol grounds in Columbia. Austin has three monuments to the Confederacy outside its state capitol.

Everywhere the Stars and Bars flies it causes uproar, whether it's in a dorm room at Harvard (1991) or if you color it yellow and wave it a LSU football games every other autumn Saturday. Each time decent people get upset, cowards cry "heritage" because they lack the guts to proclaim their racism. Does this flag offend me? Yes it does. And those who fly it need a life and a history lesson. I'd settle for a one-way ticket to Syria.

Gallagher's Farewell to Comedy?

I Am Who I Pretend to Be

Gallagher

Uproar Entertainment 3937

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Remember Gallagher? The long-haired guy who dressed like a cross between a mime and an audition for "Where's Waldo?" The dude who used to smash watermelons with a sledgehammer? Gallagher was ubiquitous in the 1980s and early 1990s, including on Showtime and Comedy Central. Then his star faded when he his act took turns some deemed racist, homophobic, and nationalistic. For the record, some of his jokes could be viewed as sexist, crude, irreligious, and mean to people with disabilities. Gallagher might be the Southern rightwing-redneck-cracker his critics make him out to be for all I know, but I've never felt that that Political Correctness had any place in comedy. Let's face it, if nobody is insulted–even if a joke is self-deprecating–there is no comedy. If your nose goes easily out of joint, stay out of comedy clubs. Tell me that Richard Pryor wasn't also racist. Did you ever hear the recently departed Joan Rivers light into a person who heckled her for being insensitive?  Comedians are supposed to make us uncomfortable. The real question is whether or not the shtick is funny.  

Funny or not? The jury has always been out on Leo Gallagher, 68, and now we're going to have some time to assess him. I Am Who I Pretend to Be looks like to be Gallagher's swan song. It's a May 2014 live performance recorded at Sacramento's Ice House Comedy Club. He has subsequently suffered his third heart attack and has announced that his health won't allow him to tour any more. His latest (last?) album is a mishmash of new routines, selected classic jokes, musings on life's absurdities, and some poking around in the audience in search of cheap laughs. That is to say, it's similar to what he's been doing for decades. One also suspects that the title is also a backhanded slap at his brother Ron, who appropriated a lot of older brother's act.

Gallagher's shtick can best be described as uneven. Like a lot of comics, he is at his best when he takes logic and stretches it to its social extremes. Why, he ponders, do new socks come with little plastic hangers when no one hangs up their socks? If there is extraterrestrial life, why haven't they contacted us? Gallagher suggests it's because "they can smell stupid" and fly right on by. Don't get him started on sporks, the presence of French in the English language, or people who refuse to look at evidence. Other bits are simply dated. There are gems hiding amidst dross in his observations of the battle of the sexes, the dross mostly being social views about 30m years out of date. He has a routine about using handicapped bathrooms that isn't as offensive as it is sophomoric. Throughout the concert he plays the crank, sometimes with hilarious results and sometimes in the ways that make you want to leave him to wallow in his own irritability.   

Gallagher was reportedly very upset when Comedy Central rated him just the 100^th greatest stand-up comic of all-time. On all such lists there are weird choices. Does anyone find Bobcat Goldthwait (#61) Bernie Mac (#72), or Andrew Dice Clay (#95) funny? But let's be honest– Leo Gallagher was always a second-tier guy, as the recent deaths of Rivers and Robin Williams so poignantly remind us. I don't think it was Gallagher's bad boy antics that pushed him down the ranks so much as the fact that his initial rise was a zeitgeist thing. Smashing things appealed to a generation that used to say, "tear down the walls" and mean it. His anarchic high-octane energy resonated with Baby Boomers when they were still in their 30s and 40s. When Gallagher's energy flagged, the zeitgeist shifted, and running across the stage yielded to stand-up, some people were offended by what they heard and others simply grew tired of same old/same old.

Is Gallagher's swan song worth caring about? I'll give it a gentleman's B-. It has some very sharp and funny moments, but overall it does not sparkle with transcendent wit, cleverness, or brilliance. Alas, it's also more rant than frenetic anarchy.—Rob Weir