oedipus' online complexes

thoughts on a year's worth of reading...

well, not many thoughts yet -- more of a partial list of the latest titles i've read... i'm still collecting titles from my list and checking accessible format data, but i thought i'd put up the contents of one of the lists of books i've been reading, compiled from what i periodically entered into the "Last Book Read" field of my "About" page.

The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd [RFBD DT-GR094]

if Captain Kidd was a pirate, he may have been the most inept (and undoubtedly the unluckiest) pirate to ever ply the seas...

Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, by the currently reigning "dean" of american revolutionary studies, Gordon S. Wood...

[with footnotes, etc.: RFBD DT-HS765]

[without footnotes, etc.: NLS RC 62558]

ISBN: 1594200939

a commercial, unabridged, recording of The Body Artist, by Don Delillo, read by Laurie Anderson, who also provided the incidental music...

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami

The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, The First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805, by Richard Zacks [RFBD DT-HP609]

Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign, by Stephan Talty (unabridged)

outside of academic works, this history of the establishment of a permanant british presence in the caribbean (the conquest and retention of jamaica being the key to britain's future caribbean prosperity, has perhaps the longest sub-title of any book i've read... i am aware that books have been suffering from "title bloat" for quite some time now -- at least the past 15 years here in the states, but titles today are reaching the point where they will have to be continued on the back cover... ultimately, however, it left me hungry for a copy of Buccaneers of North America, originally published in dutch as De Americaensche Zee-Roovers by alexandre exquemelin, who accompanied morgan on most of his piratical raids, and whom morgan sued for libel after morgan had been knighted by charles II, and appointed lieutenant governor of jamaica... along with Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates and Daniel Defoe's True History of Pyrates, the Buccaneers of North America formed the basis for my mental conception of all things piratical in the western hemisphere...

I Am America (And So Can You!): The Audio Book, by Stephen Colbert (read by SC with guests)

In the Name of the Father: Washington's Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation, François Furstenberg RFBD DT-HT474]

one of the best works of american exegesis which i have read in the past decade, a slyly wry account of how Washington became, through the civic texts of high and low culture, to be revered as the father of his nation (and, later, spiritual father of the Confederacy), and most praised for actions he never took and sentiments he never expressed... a strong candidate for the best work regardless-of-subject-matter-or-style which i've read this year

Demon of the Waters: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Whaleship Globe, by Gregory Gibson.

Jefferson's Demons: Portrait of a Restless Mind, by Michael Knox Beran

a poetic portrait of Jefferson, as poet-philosopher;

The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard

Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, by Eric Jay Dolin (a VERY disappointing read)

Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in Americ, by Elliot Jaspin

after the quake, by Haruki Murakami

six short stories, all of which are either indirectly or tangentally related to the 1995 Kobe earthquake... oh, and a side note: since i tend not to capitalize that which is traditionally capitalized, a product of using a braille keyboard to input grade 2 braille, where capitalization (and especially the "all caps" sign, which wastes 2 cells and 4 unnecessary keystrokes) was quickly discarded and a habit that still helps me type faster than i would otherwise, Jay Rubin, the translator of after the quake noted that murakami had insisted that the title of the work be printed in all lower case...

The Chronicles of Clovis, by Saki (H.H. Munro) [synthesized speech from plain text]

i don't know if this actually counts towards my total, as this is one of the works i periodically re-read; it can be enjoyed as a meal, or doled out sparingly, like the last of the hallowe'en candy...

Ten Days in a Madhouse, by Nellie Bly

the once scandalous is now ridiculous -- or was it ever thus? a good, quick read, courtesy of the enthusiastic narrator, named Alice

Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross, by Richard Winston (RFB&D book number: TK0856)

although merovingian and carolingian history has always exerted a fascination upon me, starting with my first reading of Einhard's Life of Charlamagne (which i would, eventually, while at university read in the original latin Einhardi Vita Karoli Magni), and was also fortunate enough to have had an early pre-teen encounter with The Life of Charlemagne, penned ca. 883/884 for Charles the Fat by the "The Monk of Saint Gall", both of which i found in an ancient hardcover omnibus edition in a pile of discarded books on a pre-teen bicycle ride, and although i later encountered Heinrich Fichtenau's classic (and if you study in the united states, mandatory) Das karolingische Imperium, or The Carolingian Empire (NLS TC0095), also translated as Life in the Age of Charlemagne, but i had never read a general popular biography of Charlamagne, and so i asked a few academics i know who aren't medievalistss, but who do have to teach surveys of "Post-Roman Europe: Decay and Developments" and the like, and was pointed in the direction of what critics still consider the best non-academic biography of Charlamagne in english, Richard Winston's Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross, first published in 1954... it is an admirable read, painting a very nuanced portrait of the man and his age, based as much on archival source material as on secondary material, a rarity in the realm of popular biography (especially that of the decade that followed WWII ...

according to statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of "overweight" individuals has reached 1.6 billion, worldwide, as compared to the 800 million the WHO classifies as "dangerously malnurished"...

has humanity reached a tipping point, or is it just the planet we so lopsidedly inhabit that is tipping?

happy fourth of august!!! -- today is one of my high holy days, and i do mean high...

in fact, today is an international high holy day, as it marks the date on which Louis Armstrong, the most revolutionary musician of the twentieth century, who taught the world not only how to swing, but how to sing and how to solo, would have thought himself a year and a month older than he had been the previous calendar year... and, he would have been wrong... since Armstrong's death, it has been discovered through baptismal records, that today, august fourth, is his actual (or, what i prefer to call, his "after-the-factual") birthday...

Armstrong was not only unaware that he celebrated his birthday on the wrong day, but that he was a full year and a month younger than he believed himself to be his entire life... all he knew was when, as a child, he asked his mother, "when was i born?", she told him he was born on independence day, in the year of the riots, which occured in 1900, and Louis had no reason to doubt her... one need look no further for a mark of sincerity in Armstrong's mistaken belief that he had been born on July 4, 1900, than the fact that he registered for the draft in force during WWI; a full year and a month before he was actually eligible for the draft... not exactly the actions of a man who chose the date for its symbolic associations, nor one who had it thrust on him in his early career as a publicity stunt, or even a man who was simply attempting to appear a year older than he actually was...

the fact that Armstrong has two birthdays starkly illustrates that one needn't travel too far back into american history, to find individuals who were completely illiterate, temporally as well as in the usual sense of the word, associating important life events not with specific dates, but tied to significant events...

if you are in NYC on august 4th, you can hear WKCR's twice-anual aural celebration of Armstrong, from midnight on the 4th through midnight on the 5th (local time, UTC -4) at 89.9 on the FM dial; if you don't live close enough to new york to pick up WKCR's signal, can always listen to WKCR's live audio stream, which comes in 2 flavors:

1. WKCR's live MP3 stream, or


2. WKCR's RealAudio stream

and, if you read this after the fourth, you can still listen to archived tributes to Louis Armstrong (as well as a number of other festivals and marathons, from Bix Beiderbeck to Ornette Coleman) -- there's also the wealth of archived materials of Armstrong's precedent shattering early recordings at RedHotJazz.org

don't ever forget: Pops is Tops!

not that i care, not that anyone cares, and definitely not that anyone cares whether i care or not, the current major league baseball rule which awards home-field advantage to the winner of the all-star game has never made sense to me (but then again, most of baseball's arcana is a mystery to me, not being a "numbers" person...

all that really means is that i'm a medievalist by training, not a statistician; in fact, in a glowing example of american education in action, i tested better for math at the age of 11 then i did at 16, a fall so precipitous that i wouldn't have gotten into a "decent" university, had not the earlier math test scores counted...

anyway, to return to the nub of my gist, now that the american and national leagues play each other in inter-league play twice a year, why isn't the question as to who possesses home-field advantage settled by overall total of inter-league wins -- if the american league beats more national league teams tham the national league teams beat american league teams, then shouldn't home-field advantage go to the league which had a better record against the other league...

wait a minute -- this is why i hate talking baseball -- it twists one around in knots (gregorian, if not gordian) and obscures simple facts such as shouldn't the team with the most victories in a season be awarded home-field advantage? purists say that the 2 leagues play under different rules, to which i counter that when national league teams play in american league parks, they do so under american league rules, while when an american league team takes the field in a national league park, they play under national league rules, so why not use overall inter-league play as the deciding factor? it would make such riviting games as colorado versus tampa bay actually mean something, other than a chance to see a star play, which before inter-league play, you could only do if your team got into the world series and faced that particular star's team, which even i can figure, is an unlikely event...

why the hell am i writing about baseball? i think it is part of my living will that if i do, the plug is to be pulled, and i am to be garroted with same...

composition date: 14 April 2007

from a young age, i have always tried to listen to period and geographically appropriate music whilst i read... having finally finished the unabridged audio version of Against the Day, here's a list of what comprised an important part of my experience -- and enjoyment -- of the book, which is the point of the exercise in the first place...

• The Beau Hunks: Edward MacDowell: Woodland Sketches, Opus 8 [Koch Records]
• The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra: That Demon Rag! [Dorian]
• The White Star Orchestra: Titanic - Music as Heard on the Fateful Voyage [Rhino Records]
• Tuva - Voices from Central Asia [Rounder Records]
• Kompania Takís Loukas: Musique Traditionnelles d'Épire (Folk Music from Epirius) [Auvidis]
• Echoes of the Forest - Field Recordings of Romanian Music from Transylvania [Music of the World CDT-144]
• Béla Bartók - Complete Solo Piano Music (György Sándor , piano) [Sony SK 68276/68277/68278/68279]
• Sviraj Trubo 2 (a compilation locally produced in Serbia by an unidentified label)
• Ukranian Cello: Works of Lisogub, Kossenko, Shtogarenko & Ishchenko (Julia Pantelyat, cello; Dmitrij Manelis, piano) [Dorian DIS-80122]

as well as WFMU's alternating monday evening shows, broadcast at 7pm local (NJ) time:

1. The Antique Phonograph Music Program: cylinders and discs played on acoustic, wind-up players; and
2. Thomas Edison's Attic

both hour-long shows are available from WFMU as podcasts...