Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black *** 1/2

If George Saunders wrote stories addressing the black experience in America, they would sound a lot like the stories in Friday Black. They have mildly science-fictional premises, absurd humor, social commentary, and naturally flowing prose. They're angrier and more violent than Saunders' stories, but the intensity doesn't seem out of place given Adjei-Brenyah's subjects.

Farley Mowat, The Boat Who Wouldn't Float ***

I would characterize Mowat's writing style in The Boat Who Wouldn't Float as a cross between Jean Shepherd (of A Christmas Story fame) and James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small). His old-fashioned comic sensibilities are similar to Shepherd's, and his characters are lovable rural eccentrics like Herriot's. All three men purport to be telling autobiographical stories. When I read this introduction to a comic set piece, I can only hear it in Shepherd's Christmas Story voiceover:

I have never been able to decide whether I am glad I was not present when Jack arrived at Muddy Hole... I missed witnessing a scene which has since become part of Southern Shore folklore.

Evelyn ordered this book for me because it takes place in Newfoundland (and has a titular sailboat). Despite the fact that Mowat lived in Newfoundland for many years and is presumably fond of it, in this book he emphasizes the negative stereotypes about it: desolate interior, impossible to get around in, constant fog, drunken residents, treacherous coastlines. The only place that comes off well is Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the French islands off the southern coast.

I had a hard time with a lot of the nautical humor, because his schooner was so dangerously unseaworthy. I didn't believe that Mowat would head to the open ocean knowing the boat's shortcomings. (I know, it's a comedy.)

I was happy to learn about an old smuggler's trick: tying bags of salt to the illicit as "insurance" against coast guard cutters.

If one o' they cutters comes onto we, we heaves bags and boxes over side. The salt, bein' heavy, takes the boxes straight down below, and there they stays 'till the salt melts into the water. How long that'll take depends on how much salt you uses and what kind o' bag. ... You can time it pretty close ... When 'tis time for the crates to come afloat why there'll be a couple o' dories nearby, jiggin' for cod as innocent as you please.

The Nonpareil Books edition has a nice photo on the cover, although I don't think it's actually Happy Adventure. 

Diane Williams, The Collected Stories of Diane Williams ** 1/2

It is a testament to the influence of the Romantics that calling a writer "poetic" implies lyrical descriptions of nature. Diane Williams is poetic in ways that better reflect contemporary poetry: compression, disrupted syntax, oblique allusions, shifting point of view, alienation, best taken in small doses.

As with poetry, I wonder whether I read these very short stories too quickly or with insufficient attention.

I like Williams' titles, both for her books (Some Sexual Success Stories Plus Other Stories in Which God Might Choose to Appear) and stories ("The Widow and the Hamburger"; "The Fullness of Life is From Something"). Her off-kilter sentence construction is often funny, and certain thematic concerns come through, but most of the stories fly over my head. Here's a paragraph selected from a random page (398, in the story "There are so many smart people walking around"):

When she started to eat me, I asked her if she was tired. She said yes. I told her to sleep. Then she cried. I brought her back to my beard to eat me. She started to cry. I told her to sleep. She started to cry. I asked her if she was tired. She said yes. I told her to sleep, except that I ate her until she started to cry again and she yelled.

Unusually for an experimental artist, the stories from her most recent collection, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine,  come closer to sense,  with fewer time and location jumps.

When introducing yourself to an avant-garde writer you are unfamiliar with, choose a work that has fewer than 764 pages.

Ben Ratliff, Every Song Ever ** 1/2

In Every Song Ever, veteran New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff reimagines the very idea of music appreciation in this day and age ... [when] we can listen to nearly anything, at any time, from Detroit techno to jam bands to baroque opera.

I picked up this book expecting it to provide me with new ways to appreciate music by noting "unexpected connections" and surprising juxtapositions between disparate musical sources. The cover features recommendations from authors who have enhanced my listening experiences (Alex Ross, Simon Reynolds).

The basic premise of Ratliff's book is that the awesome breadth of music we encounter requires us to understand it without reference to the conventions of particular genres or to "the vocabulary and grammar of the composer." He wants to describe the elements "in a language that is not specifically musical." He uses concepts such as repetition, density, stubbornness, and sadness.

I found these concepts, and his use of them, too abstract to be useful to me. "Punk is busking and journalism and dogma and accountability and unity and the humanities. Metal is virtuosity and philosophy and disposition and rumor and misanthropy and science." Ratliff's best insights come when he is not being metaphysical but relying on specific knowledge of particular genres. The exception is the chapter on "Discrepancy," which drew my attention to places where there are "slight discrepancies in timing and attack between" bandmates. "They are all chattering around the beat; they can do this because they know where the beat lives. (It lives in Bill Wyman's bass line.)"

The book did lead me to one new artist (Okkyung Lee) and to another book that I may check out if I can accept its academic style (Music Grooves, by Charles Keil and Steven Feld).

Patrick O'Brian, The Hundred Days ***

I might hope for the Aubrey-Maturin series to pick up the pace as it nears its conclusion, not to mention the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, but The Hundred Days is merely a typical entry. The most noticeable difference from earlier books is that characters find numerous opportunities to re-explain the current situation; recaps have typically been less overt.

Napoleon is back from exile, so the British Navy needs to recall all of its furloughed captains and refit its ships. In the meantime, Aubrey and his convoy set out to disrupt French shipbuilding in the Adriatic and block a shipment of African gold that promises to bankroll it. This setup provides for an interlude in North Africa, with Dr Maturin traveling across the Algerian desert and hunting lions. It builds to a happy ending, with the treasure captured, Napoleon defeated, and Jack Aubrey dining with two of his oldest lady friends.