Neil Young and Meta-Memoir

I've been quite curious about the new Neil Young memoir since it came out earlier this month. I have been a Neil Young fan for a long time - Rust Never Sleeps is easily one of the best rock & roll records of all time; Harvest, Harvest Moon, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere - the list goes on. As well, the concert film Heart of Gold is fantastic, and a new concert film, Neil Young Journeys, is also out this month. He released Neil Young Archives, Vol 1: 1963-1972 a few years ago - home recordings, early demos, personal stuff. So it is natural to think that his memoir would be illuminating - Young is looking back on his life and career, and has the desire to share it with his fans.

I listened to Neil Young on NPR's Fresh Air a couple of weeks ago - and however astute and interviewer Terry Gross is, Neil Young was still, well, Neil Young, as mysterious and reluctant to share as ever. Perhaps he isn't reluctant to share, just reluctant to submit to someone else's terms. Levi Asher at Literary Kicks thinks so, too. His latest blog post is titled "Neil Young's Book Is Not a Great Memoir, But It's a Great Something":

A memoir? Waging Heavy Peace is a stream-of-consciousness, sucking in to itself like a vortex every thought, idea, opinion, business plan, musical memory, old grudge, old friendship or hilarious observation that flits past Neil's eyes as he sits there trying to write. Heavy Peace is a highly self-conscious work -- meta-memoir, to be sure -- and Neil does not seem happy about the fact that he has committed to writing an autobiography, even though he did so of his own free will. He swerves crazily, like a drunken bus driver on a mountain trail, between past and present tense, between the 1960s and the 1980s and now, between technology talk and random memories and musical explanations and tributes to his long-lost friends. The book will keep you awake and amused, but it won't deliver the punch of truth and honesty that a great memoir should deliver, and that recent books by Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and Patti Smith all delivered.

The rest of the article is a great review of the book - I am still intrigued about the book; however, when I read it, I won't be looking for answers.

Happy New Year

I was hoping to post on interesting things during the nearly month-long hiatus between now and the last post, but for several reasons I did not; now, there are several reasons to post once again:

1. I just picked up Nick Hornby's new book Shakespeare Wrote For Money. It is the third collection of his articles for The Believer, an American arts magazine (and published by McSweeney's). He is interesting and colloquial and I feel that my life would be enriched by having a beer with him, mostly because I am convinced that he feels the same way about me. The book reads like a memoir, a memoir through books, as it were, and has created a wonderful segue to the next reason for posting after such an absence.

2. Through Hornby's new book I picked up his first volume of articles, The Polysyllabic Spree, which led me to a Google search of Gregory Corso's poem "Marriage" (a quirky poem which can be found here) which led me to an interesting lit blog called Literary Kicks. Literary Kicks is a lit blog - possibly the first - which I intend to read on a semi-regular basis. Which leads me to my next reason for posting.

3. Through Literary Kicks, I read a review of a review of Azar Nafisi's new memoir Things I've Been Silent About. This lead me to the review itself, which made me want to read the book, which reminded me that I was already reading book of hers, Reading Lolita in Tehran, which is subtitled "A memoir in books," leading you, dear reader, back to Nick Hornby, who reveals himself ever so slightly in each of his Believer articles about the books he's bought and read each month. Which, of course, leads me to the next reason for posting.

4. Nick Hornby is a good writer because he makes other people think they're good writers, too. His opinions are my opinions, written a thousand times better, but nevertheless leads me to thinking that I can write my own opinions just as good. And so, in my mind, this post is written as well as Hornby's assessment of his brother-in-law's new book. At this point, Bonnie calls from the other room, "you're a weirdo". In my mind, however, I am triumphant. Now to do just as brilliant a job on the dishes.