A Literary Life

Perfect from Now On (John Sellers)

I like John. I like John a lot. I think John and I could be friends and drink beer at a local pub and jam on each other’s iPods. However, I admit I didn’t RABIDLY enjoy John’s book the way I did immediately take to his personality. I liked the book — especially the fact that it turned me on to a lot of new music — but a dozen pages of footnotes dedicated to how he spends the anniversary of Ian Curtis’s death drones in my eyes and makes me sleepy.

In other words, portions of the book are pure fan-to-fan fiction. If you don’t share the same heartfelt passions for particular gods of indie rock, you won’t truly get what the man is laying down, dig? And given indie fans’ (all music fans?) tendency to bash the well-loved indie bands of others as “too trendy” or “knock-offs” to make their own favorites seem more cool, he alienates a few readers, too. (I mean what’s with the animosity, or perhaps just indifference towards Modest Mouse, Johnny boy? Huh?!)

But I’ll give the man props for this: He made me REALLY listen to the music of The Shins. Outside of the ubiquitous Garden State Soundtrack, that is. While Seller’s prose didn’t disappoint me (let’s get that straight), it didn’t wow me either, but lyrics like this from The Shins (Sleeping Lessons, Wincing the Night Away) do:

Eviscerate your fragile frame
And spill it out on the ragged floor
A thousand different versions of yourself

And if the old guard still offend
They got nothing left on which you depend
So enlist every ounce
Of your bright blood
And off with their heads
Jump from The hook

You’re not obliged to swallow anything you despise
See, those unrepenting buzzards want your life

And they got no right
As sure as you have eyes
They got no right

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars - Vacation book club selection

Update: I can’t upload the song here, as per The Boyfriend’s little reminder of legality (party pooper!). Check out the link in the comment below for the YouTube video of Sleeping Lessons.

Biography, Non-Fiction |