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Dean Wareham’s Black Postcards is a very readable memoir that may ironically accrue a larger audience than his bands Galaxie 500 and Luna, whose careers the book chronicles. It’s both touching and amusing, but one thing I didn’t find it was melodramatic, possibly because I kept hearing the words spoken lackadaisically over Velvets-like guitar. Not so for Liz Phair, who hypes the rock’n'roll angle pretty strongly in her NYT book report review, opening with a late-’80s Queen lyric and focusing on more rough-and-tumble than you’d expect in a piece about an indie rocker with “an elective reading list to rival Art Garfunkel’s.”
Freddie Mercury once said, “I want it all and I want it now.” This appetite might aptly be called the rock ‘n’ roll disease, and Dean Wareham seems to have caught it. Or is in recovery. Or is somewhere along the road…
He portrays himself as a surprisingly unsympathetic character. He visits a prostitute. He makes people angry. He follows girls home after the show. He snorts coke. No apologies are made because this is, after all, a rock ‘n’ roll autobiography. Late nights, a lot of drugs, a little infidelity (well, maybe not just a little, but I won’t give away the ending) — that’s par for the course, right?
…Even his writing style has a rhythm to it: passages move rapidly back and forth between incident and impression, creating a kind of (I’m not kidding) rock ‘n’ roll.
Phair fans know she’s always found Wareham pretty glamorous, though.
Frontman [NYT]
Liz Phair – Stratford-on-Guy [Youtube]
[Photo: WENN]
As book reviewers go, Liz Phair is a great songwriter.
“Readable” is maybe an overstatement. “Touching” and “amusing” are just folly.
Why does snorting coke make someone unsympathetic? So judgemental, Liz… so judgemental…
Freddie Mercury once said, “I want it all and I want it now.” This appetite might aptly be called the rock ‘n’ roll disease, and Dean Wareham seems to have caught it.
So USA Today. Or college freshman essay. Same difference!
this is kind of rehashing a comment i left elsewhere, but i was actually really impressed by this (politely excepting her adoption of the phrase “band traffic controller”.) and i’ve always been fairly indifferent to her either way. i think she adequately addresses all facets of the book; of COURSE she’s going to, as you put it, “hype the rock and roll angle” a little bit to get the reader’s attention. i frankly really appreciate the fact that this is the only article i’ve seen on the book that doesn’t immediately and exclusively focus on the cheating-with-britta part, which, although salacious, only makes up a fraction of the book.
you know i heart the idolator, but i feel like you’re kind of grasping to justify your snarkiness here.
Yeah, one might assume that a rock’n'roll musician would, indeed, “hype the rock’n'roll angle” when called upon to review a rock’n'roll book.
and no points for the gratuitious, predictable “blowjob queen” reference.
and no points for the gratuitous, predictable “blowjob queen” reference.
@thearcanemodel: Agreed. From herein, we shall all use, “Washed-up professional embarrassment who (without getting into the whole boring ‘indie cred’ discussion) had so little faith in her god-given talent, that she sold herself down the river with a ‘Forever 21′ gift certificate in one hand and The Matrix’s business card in the other,” to describe her.
Show of hands?
I’m all for writers diversifying their careers and God bless anyone who can get some scratch for writing a book review, but this particular writeup was very freshman-comp-class quality. I mean, the “X once said…” opening alone made me cringe.
Webster’s defines “lame” as the quality of having 90s sublebrities write book reviews instead of, you know, book reviewers. Next week Carrot Top weighs in on Beckett and the Comic Imagination, and an electrician will perform my tooth extraction.
@jetsetjunta: You leave Carrot Top out of this. The manchild has enough problems as it is.
Huh. I thought it was pretty well-written. Shall I take my seat in Minority Corner for the eighth time in as many days?
I love Liz, but this felt as if a pretty heavy editing hand had been applied. More irritating, though, was the Times feeling the need to spout off about Liz’s contribution on the contents page. It was like, “Look, we got a rock star to write for us!” They really beefed up her resume, too, though it’s nice to know that now Capitol has dropped her she’s still keeping busy.
@joshservo: That’s fairly generous as completeley accurate takedowns go.
@SuperUnison: Well, I am above all else a gentleman.
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