New Book - A Confederacy of Dunces

I finally finished Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector by Mick Brown. It was a slow read, but very fascinating. Unlike a lot of biographies that you might read about people who have been vilified, Brown did a great job of making sure you didn’t sympathize with Spector. The book starts at birth and ends just after Spector's first trial ended with a hung jury. The bottom line is that Spector is a musical genius with a dangerous combination of a Napoleon complex, hubris, insecurity, psychosis, and firearms. It was bound to backfire at some point. The guy was (and probably still is) bat shit nuts, but man, did he make some great music -- and, from what I learned, he is more than willing to tell you about the great music he made, as well as take credit for making some other great music that he had no part of. It was a sad tale, but in the end I was not left feeling sorry for Spector at all.

On the recommendation of both my wife and Can Can, I have started reading A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, which is about some fat dude named Ignatius who lives in New Orleans. It has an interesting history, for those who don't know. The author committed suicide in 1969 at the age of 31. When cleaning out his personal effects, his mom found a carbon copy of the manuscript, read it, thought it was great, and took it to a Loyola (La.) professor in 1976, who helped get it published in 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the next year. In the words of Charles DeMar, "Suicide is never the answer, little trooper."

Books read in 2009:
The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis
Oh The Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey
I Hate New Music: The Classic Rock Manifesto by Dave Thompson
Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal by Ian Christe
Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector by Mick Brown