Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (review)

by Gregory Frye

A lot of young, creative people will read this book, individuals – such as myself – who never really thought of or cared about business models, board meetings, and CEOs. And, of course, as Walter Isaacson’s exhaustively researched biography shows, Steve Jobs exemplified none of these things in the typical sense. He was a prototype, a worthy model for new thinking and future innovation.

With full access to Jobs, family members, friends, associates, colleagues current and former, Isaacson had finally agreed to write the biography on commission when he learned Jobs was about to undergo his first cancer operation in 2009. Jobs encouraged everyone to be open and honest with Isaacson, surprisingly giving the author full control over the finished manuscript – with exception to the cover design. Jobs’s primary desire behind the biography was that he wanted his four children to know him better.

Wayne Coyne and the Flaming Lips

by Gregory Frye

Over twenty five years of making music and The Flaming Lips are still turning heads, attracting new fans and re-inspiring the old ones. Their latest headline involves their announcement to record a 24-hour song to be released via hard drive inside five human skulls on Halloween. Quite a progression from the six-hour song they just released, which actually turns out to be worth listening to.

This group has always blazed its own path – sometimes with actual fire, onstage psychedelic freakouts that won them a record contract with Warner Bros. in the early ‘90s. Since then they’ve evolved over a number of albums, from the early days of scene-changing surreal noise punk to critical masterpieces like The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

VHS excerpt by Pablo D’Stair

The following is an excerpt from VHS, a literary novel by Pablo D’Stair being released in various e-formats, absolutely free-of-charge (and in limited edition print-editions-by-part through giveaways). Information on the project, including links to what is currently available, can be found at www.vhsbook.wordpress.com

“before, therapist, after”

I dressed casually, had hours before my appointment with my therapist so looked around to see if anyone was home.  My little brother was, so I put my finger in his cereal bowl and he told me it didn’t bother him.

“Why aren’t you up to something?”

“I will be, I just wanted some cereal.”

I repeated Cereal like he’d said it funny, but he knew he hadn’t, so that was a draw.

Then I called my friend Vladimir and we agreed he would drive me to get coffee if I bought him coffee, too.  Vladimir also agreed to drive me to my therapist session, asked me a lot of questions about it, asked me, most specifically, if I thought it was helping and I got really earnest that it certainly seemed to be, felt a little like I was trying to sell him on seeing a therapist, too, but he’d never do that because he was against talk as a cure for anything—if I broached the subject he’d rattle off a list of wars and find things to blame them on then would sum up by saying how everyone should “just shut up”.

Coffee Morning Words

I do not fear death, but I hope God gives me enough years to complete my vision. My pen moves across the page, time does not stop. A series of little breaks. The cultivation of self. Travelling to the island of Chios by boat this Saturday, the voyage eight hours across the Aegean Sea. The island faces Eastward, five miles off the coast of Turkey. I’ve never been that far before. Onassis was from Chios. My dear friend George Zymarakis, New York/Greek artist, is from there. Rumors that Christopher Columbus may have actually been from there. Bravo. I believe it.

My dear friend George Zymarakis often compares his 75 years of life to Homer’s The Odyssey. The first time I met him we talked about a lot of things, and at the end of the conversation he said that he was Odysseus and that after three Odysseys, he’d reached Ithaca. “Do you understand?” he asked. And I said, ”What do you mean by Odysseys, George?” He turned his finger in the air, tracing the circumference of a slow motion frisbee. “Each Odyssey is a marriage, you see? Now I’ve reached my Ithaca.”

George has continually suggested I read Homer’s The Odyssey, the Fitzgerald translation, saying that we would then be on the same page.

At the bookstore last night, I could only find a different translation. A prose version of the Odyssey, translated by T.E. Shaw. The alternative was a specially bound and illustrated edition translated into rhyming verse. Horrid. I hate poetry that rhymes. Plus the T.E. Shaw version was only 4 Euros. I took it home, looked up this T.E. Shaw fellow. Turns out his real name is T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia of international fame.  At the beginning of the introduction he writes, “The twenty-eighth English rendering of the Odyssey can hardly be a literary event, especially when it aims to be essentially a straightforward translation. Wherever choice offered between a poor and a rich word richness had it, to raise the colour.”

It’s a shame that I’m just now reading this epic, but trust me, I’m reading as fast as I can. Also making my way through Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon and The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano. More on these works later.

To get a feel for the language of Shaw’s version:

By now the other warriors, those that had escaped head-long ruin by sea or in battle, were safely home. Only Odysseus tarried, shut up by Lady Calypso, a nymph and very Goddess, in her hewn-out caves. She craved him for her bed-mate: while he was longing for his house and his wife. Of a truth the rolling seasons had at last brought up the year marked by the Gods for his return to Ithaca; but not even there among his loved things would he escape further conflict. Yet had all the Gods with lapse of time grown compassionate towards Odysseus – all but Poseidon, whose enmity flamed ever against him till he had reached his home.

Okay. Too much computer for me. I raise my coffee mug to a new day, another private apocalypse in the spirit of personal and spiritual revelation. “Have a happy” as my dear friend George likes to say.

Gregory Frye

July 2011

Athens, Greece

What is a father when you’ve never had one; or, check out the veins on that guy from Ren & Stimpy

This is a guest post by Caleb J Ross as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour. His goal is to post at a different blog every few days beginning with the release of his novel Stranger Will in March 2011 to the release of his second novel, I Didn’t Mean to Be Kevin in November 2011. If you have connections to a lit blog of any type, professional journal or personal site, please contact him. He would love to compromise your integrity for a day. To be a groupie and follow this tour, subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed. Follow him on Twitter: @calebjross.com. Friend him on Facebook: Facebook.com/rosscaleb

Growing up, the most intimidating man in my life was not my father. The most intimidating man in my life was perhaps the father figure from Ren & Stimpy

I never had a father of my own, so I absorbed—subconsciously or no—fatherly lessons from the men and male peers around me. I was never the leader. Never the authority on the playground. I was always the low rung on the ladder. I accepted this role, and today I’ve even learned to embrace it. To this day I tend to play the role of the bumbling apprentice.

I never cared much about tools, or sports, or pussy. And still today, the first two of those three don’t thrill me at all. Lacking the stable father figure gave me a warped “cartoon family” mentality about dads (and to an extent, about family in general). To me, fathers come in two flavors: the slapstick, endearing oaf and the strict disciplinarian. There is no middle ground in cartoons and therefore no middle ground in real life. I am the former. Ask my wife, even in the most inappropriate situations I’d offer a quick one-liner before I’d capitalize on the chance to teach my child a life lesson.

So to me, the extreme, anger-fueled father figure from Ren & Stimpy represented a reality that I was always glad to have avoided. My father could have been this man. I could have been raised in his image. I could have cared about sports. Dear God!

This unique relationship I have with the fatherly roles makes the themes explored in Stranger Will even more interesting, I think. On its surface, the novel is a story of a man unsure of his impeding role as a father. His fiancée is seven months pregnant; this man is further than two months from accepting this role. Deeper, the story is about what it means to carry on for another generation. Why do we have children? Surely, we aren’t controlled by instinct; humans are ethically independent creatures. The only answer I could come up with is that another generation represents another chance at perfection. But we all know there is no such thing as perfection, right? And thus the dilemma for our soon-to-be-father.

Tietz INTERVIEW

My interview with Brandon Tietz is live over at 3:AM. If you haven’t read his debut novel Out of Touch you’d better get in on that action. Do it. DO IT NOW!

Out of Touch Review

Brandon Tietz and I may be fellow Kansas Citians, but I’m not about to kiss his ass in a review. In other words, I can honestly say his book Out of Touch is one of the best debut novels I’ve come across in a long time. Check out the new review over at 3:AM Magazine. Interview forthcoming.

 

 

Seven Demons Reviewed

Last month Sean Patrick Reardon wrote up a nice review for the You’re Dead and I Killed You anthology. I was particularly humbled by his praise for my story “The Seven Demons of Randal Murray.”

The Seven Demons of Randal Murray

My short story “The Seven Demons of Randal Murray” appears in the new anthology You’re Dead and I Killed You (Brown Paper Publishing). Take a look at the free PDF in the BPP catalogue. A lot of other good stuff in this anthology as well. Hard copies soon available through Amazon.

Stephen Graham Jones interview

So, what’s it like to interview one of your favorite writers? Awesome. Click here for my interview with Stephen Graham Jones, and here for my review of his latest novel It Came From Del Rio.