Book Review: “Beatles vs. Stones”
Beatles vs. Stones by John McMillian 288 pp. Simon & Schuster, 2013 Reviewed by Devin McKinney A character in Jonathan Lethem’s novel The Fortress of Solitude claims that every small-group dynamic found in fiction or in life is comprehensible via the Beatles model of organizational relationships: “The Beatles thing is an archetype, it’s like the basic human formation. Everything naturally forms into [...]
POV
From Dullblogger Hua: "She's Leaving Home" from the perspective of a girl leaving home. (Anyone know anything about Kathy McCord?) http://youtu.be/ETiDNME4tMA
Some vinyl to complete your collection
It's amazing how many men used to wear horn-rimmed glasses, isn't it? For those of you with a little extra scratch, two Beatles vinyl rarities are up for sale: number A0000001 of The White Album, and a copy of Sgt Pepper with various Capitol execs dotting the crowd in the background. The White Album, which was purchased in 1989 for $1000 (seems [...]
Full of turtle thoughts
As mentioned before, my introduction to a new edition of Russell Hoban's Turtle Diary compares it to "Eleanor Rigby." A version of the essay can now be read at Slate.
These happy days are yours and—?!
DEVIN McKINNEY • This comes by way of Tom Sutpen's If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, which I've more than once called "the best blogsite there's ever been, ever." It appears under the heading "When Legends Gather." (For the irredeemably trivia-minded, I'm pretty sure that's Jerry Paris with half of his face cut off [...]
Beatles, Stones, and serial killers
Midnight Rambler DEVIN McKINNEY • A friend sent this link to a Guardian article titled “31 Songs That Changed My Life,” in which a variety of English creatives (actually, not enough variety—only six are women) name and briefly describe a song they found in some way determinative of their personal development. Per the EW “best album” commented on by Mike, [...]
Oh for God’s sake–
No Sgt Pepper? Did they put stupid in the water of Williamsburg? Okay, today I had the kind of experience the internet is made for. I was sitting in my doctor's office reading Entertainment Weekly and—look, I know that if I'm reading EW, I get what I deserve. I suppose I am showing my age, expecting a magazine to be [...]
He’s at it again
This month, I wrote two introductory essays—one for Harold Lloyd's 1923 film Safety Last! (see here), the other for Russell Hoban's 1975 novel Turtle Diary. I give a nod to the Beatles in each. In Bookforum, Brian Gittis takes up the book-compared-to-music thread that I put in my Hoban intro. In his introduction to the New York Review's reissue of Russell [...]