The Counterforce No. 46

John Andrew Fredrick, Ludwig Bemelmans

My favourite dedication/epigraph/quote/piece of advice comes from Ludwig Bemelmans’ How To Travel Incognito:

To Armand de la Rochefoucault

Who said to me one evening as we sat in a small tavern which is called the Little Nest of St. Cucuface, and which is located in the Forest of St. Cloud, outside of Paris: “Why don’t you write something amusing, to cheer up the sorry world.”

I often think of these words in regards to my own work and I’m what I’m trying to do in life. Bemelmans, you may know, was the man behind the Madeline books, the artwork in which I love. He also wrote many a memoir, as well as travel books, novels, and film scripts (including Yolanda and the Thief, starring Fred Astaire, that I must track down soon). I don’t remember being overly impressed by How To Travel Incognito but I want to re-read it, give it a second chance. I recently listened to the audiobook of his Hotel Splendide and very much enjoyed it. Recounting his time working in the restaurant of a fancy NYC hotel (a thinly veiled The Ritz) in the 1920s and all its shambolic, nefarious, and bizarre goings-on. My ten-month stint working as a server just came to an end last week when the restaurant closed so I can really relate. If anyone knows of any jobs going, please do hit me up

But the book I really want to talk about here is John Andrew Fredrick’s The King Of Good Intentions II, which was one of the best books I have ever read and quite possibly the funniest. I laughed out loud more than I can remember at any other book, and with times being so difficult lately, it was much needed and appreciated. The story is the continuing adventures of 90s LA indie-rock band The Weird Sisters, begun in The King Of Good Intentions, also an exceptionally funny and well-written book. JAF’s prose has Niagara-like energy, barrelling down the rapids of all that is wonderful, fun, and heartbreaking about being in a band, with many hilarious digressions into Love and Life along the way. This second book of the trilogy takes things up several notches. Part One is (a much easier to read) Ulysses as told by an indie-rock trio made up of Proust, Pynchon, and Martin Amis, all taking place on the day the world found out Kurt Cobain died. This section takes up over half the book and a big part of me wanted the Ulysses book-in-a-day to sustain over the remaining 200 pages. As it is, Part One ends in a sweepingly ecstatic view of daily life in Los Angeles. April 5, 1994 is also The Weird Sisters’ final date of their West Coast tour. After this, narrator John is faced with the struggle of returning to the quotidian.

There were some passages too that reminded me of my beloved J.P. Donleavy, let’s make him the manager of the above metaphor. The ‘things could always be worse’ extended riff, and the very ending of the book putting me in mind of the end of Are You Listening Rabbi Löw.

And on page 290 these lines echoing with my own predicaments over the years: “That’s all we ever really wanted to do. And all it was was the hardest thing there ever was to do - keep a band alive.”

And of course I should point out that the book cover looks like Led Zeppelin III, and John’s real life band, The Black Watch, once released a record with perhaps the best album title ever - Led Zeppelin 5.

I also re-read Hocus Pocus, which was the second Vonnegut I read, after Cat’s Cradle, gosh, more than 30 years ago now. It was good, very resonant with today’s America despite being published in 1990, though the big thing for me here was that I caught scent of its pages and it took me right back to where I bought it - Toad Hall in Rockport, MA. My favourite bookstore as a child and one of my all-time favourite shops. My family has gone to Rockport every summer since my mother was a teenager. I so looked forward every year to Toad Hall, its building an old granite bank with a too thin, metallic, dangerous really, circular staircase leading up to biographies and down to the childrens’ section, where I relished going even when I was getting too old to read its fare. Toad Hall is gone now, converted into a luxury apartment. They say change is the only constant, but things rarely change for the better.

Sam Carlson and I were interviewed about recording the Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass audiobook for the New Haven Independent. A lot of fun to look back over it now with the 110-hours-it-took-to-make well behind us. The audiobook is out now, at Bandcamp, Audible, and all major audiobook retailers

Very psyched I’m going to see Love and Rockets on Sunday. For the past 20 years I’ve been saying they are the band I would most like to see live. When I interviewed David J in 2011 for God Is In The TV, I asked him is there was any chance of more Love and Rockets reunion gigs. His response - “In a word, ‘no’!”

Recently David J added his voice to Melanie’s for this song. Lovely stuff