Books



Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (1984)

Maybe it’ll sound dramatic for me to say that I’m shocked this wasn’t an assigned book while I was in college. But it’s true. I am shocked.

To be clear: I’m glad it wasn’t assigned to me, because now that I’m reading it for the second time, I’m having a lot of fun discovering things on my own that an English course would probably ruin draw out from the jump. But this book, I feel—in my bones, I feel it—should be required reading for Americans, up there with To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, and any other title you want to throw out there. Yes, it’s that good. And yes, it’s that important.

I mean, if it were required reading, I’m sure it’d be banned in certain states at this very moment. Wait, is it already? I can’t seem to find anything noting that it is, which is also shocking to me, given that it’s written by a Native American woman and that it’s a book that features strong women—you know, the kinds of books that really deserve to go to the chopping block…

Anyway.

I am, of course, not the first person to notice just how good this book is. See:


“The beauty of Love Medicine saves us from being completely devastated by its power.”
— Toni Morrison

And:


“A masterpiece, written with spellbinding authenticity.”
— Philip Roth

First published in 1984, Love Medicine was Erdrich’s debut novel, and to this day, it remains the only debut novel to have won the National Book Critics Circle Award. And it launched a career that is, almost 40 years later, still incredibly strong. Erdrich has published dozens of books since, including a tetralogy sprouting from Love Medicine, as well as children’s books, books of poetry, and memoir.

Oh, and she also owns and operates an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, called Birchbark Books, which I hope to visit someday.

The point is: Louise Erdrich is a literary force. And I can’t wait to read more of her work.

As for what I appreciate most of this book, and why I’m recommending it here and now… well, I love everything about it, to be honest. But because that feels like a cop out, I’ll offer this: I started reading this for the second time on our fairly recent flight from Seattle to San Diego. The first chapter is about 40 pages, titled “The World’s Greatest Fisherman.” It’d been maybe two years since I last read it, and while I remember it resonating with me then, this time immediately after reading it, I shut the book, I looked out the little window at the clouds, and thought to myself, “Huh.”

And that “Huh” meant: I don’t know how she’s doing that, how she’s accomplishing so much, traveling so far—in, out and around a cast of characters—sometimes in the span of just paragraphs. I don’t like to be a writer that cites “the prose,” (picture a snobbily-dressed man at a cocktail party, saying: “the prose, the PROSE, I tell you, the PROOOOOOSSSSSEE!”) but she does it all without…strutting. Her sentences are vivid and beautiful without dropping $10 words. There is not a page wasted.

She’s efficient. And she’s magical. And she’s just a damn good storyteller.





Film + TV



Daisy Jones & the Six by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber / Amazon Prime (2023)

I feel like I’m not going to be awarded any cool points for this one. Maybe I’ll even have some deducted. And that’s fine. I won’t love it. But that’s fine.

Because look, I was hesitant to watch this. I really was. As I did with See—which I mentioned in my last batch of recommendations; quick update: I’m four or five episodes into season three and, ugggh, not great so far—I basically dismissed it. My wife had read the book, though, and so she showed me the trailer. And I watched it. And I did that sort of grimace-cringe face you do when you think you’re about to spend roughly seven hours of your life doing something you’re not all that excited about.

(for us, those seven hours were spread out over the course of weeks; each week, we have like two hours of show-viewing time)

It wasn’t that the trailer was bad. It just felt like, I don’t know…isn’t this just Fleetwood Mac? Isn’t this just Rumours?

Weirdly, the answer is: yes! Kind of. But not really. Author Taylor Jenkins Reid used the facts and lore of Fleetwood Mac as inspiration. And while it sounds like the TV series took a lot of different turns than the book (my wife was surprised by just how many, at times pleasantly so), I don’t know, the awareness of said inspiration really doesn’t matter.

The thing just works, man.

For real. My skepticism remained intact and well until, eh, episode three or four. And shortly after that I was telling my wife throughout the week things like, “I really want to know what happens next,” and, “I’m so curious to see what happens with Billy.”

And by the end, well, I was having me some feelings.

While watching it at times reminded me of a conversation I listened to between Neil Young and Rick Rubin, where Young was talking about music in “the old days.” And by “old days” he meant the 1960s. The Daisy Jones & the Six TV show takes place largely in the late 1970s, but I think that what Young said still applies, as what he was speaking to dealt with the state of music before and after the industry went digital (CDs, which Young cites as the largest shift, overtook vinyl and cassette tapes in sales in 1991, just for reference).

Paraphrased, he said that when digital came along, it meant that the texture of music started to fade—literally, given the process of digitization vs. that of analog—and with it went the practice of truly emotional songwriting. Rather than striving for the expression of raw emotion, musicians slowly began striving instead to be clever.

Now, I can’t say I agree wholeheartedly. I mean, there’s obviously no way that every musician across the globe falls into the camp of clever. But I also don’t think that Young’s take can be reduced to a grumpy old man telling people to get off of his lawn. Even as someone who was born in 1990, and thus someone who has only known a world where music is digitized, I do think there has to be some truth to it.

One thing I do know is that Daisy Jones & the Six captures what it is I think Young is speaking to, a time when emotion was the engine. It really made me want to read the book (and other offerings by the author). If I do, maybe I’ll come back and update this with my thoughts.





Podcasts + Music

“Paul Schrader” — WTF with Marc Maron

I don’t listen to every episode of WTF, but I’ve been a fan for a few years now and will periodically jump in and listen if a guest intrigues me. Maron’s stand-up also, if you haven’t had the chance, is worth a watch.

Generally, while Maron is seemingly a pretty down-to-earth person, lately I’ve been taking steps back from listening to celebrity podcasts. Don’t get me wrong, celebrities are humans, too, with real human problems. But don’t get it twisted: our lives are vastly different.

Case in point: I shut off a celeb podcast recently because the hosts started nonchalantly talking about how many times they’ve been to French Laundry, where it’s $350 per person to eat. One had even gifted the other a trip from LA to San Francisco, just so they could eat there.

Which I don’t expect to ever be able to do for somebody, on account that I’ll never make that kind of coin.

Anyway, celeb rant over.

One reason I’m recommending this particular episode despite my aforementioned stance, is that I’ve been a fan of Schrader’s early work (he wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), and another is that I had no idea that he was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a city I lived in from age 18 to age 25.

So that was cool to discover, as was the fact that he too has a complicated relationship with the Grand Rapids area and its spiritual makeup (I touched a bit upon this in Pt. 2 of my “Where My Creative Writing Degree Has Fallen Short” series).



“Parched” — Colorado Public Radio

Full disclosure: I haven’t listened to all of this one just yet. In fact, I’ve only listened to this very episode. So it’s possible I’m jumping the gun a bit. Maybe once I do complete it I’ll promptly come back here and remove the recommendation. But… I don’t think so.

A multi-layered look at solving a pressing environmental crisis (the drying up of the Colorado River, which currently provides water for millions of people)? It seems right up my alley.



“The Weight” — Nice Try!

This podcast seems to have been faded by its producer, Curbed. But look, rules. After you listen to this one, also check out the bidet episode, and then check out , Trufelman’s podcast about what we wear (the latest episode is all about mannequins, the previous was about audits of clothing factories, and last year included a seven-part deep dive into the past, present and future of American Ivy, the preppy style that just may never die).

It’s all worthy of your earholes.

I’m recommending this episode, in particular, because I listened to it just days after I decided to cancel the gym membership I’d held for about four months. (Long story I’ll avoid for now, but gym culture has never been my thing, despite loving fitness and movement.)

And I found it to be fascinating.



Safe Ship, Harbored by The Crane Wives (2011)

Grand Rapids, Michigan shout out again! They started to get pretty big by the time I was finishing up my degree, and it’s really great to see them continuing to put music out into the world. This is their first album, and one I return to often. Give it a listen if you like “home-grown indie folk,” (as described on Wikipedia) and do go see a show if they come to a venue near you. They’re great live.





Articles / Newsletters

^ had me weepy.



^ had me inspired.



^ had me thinking, and relating.



^ had me in awe—Nathan’s building an intricate and wonderful world right before our eyes.





Videos

“Killers of the Flower Moon—Official Teaser Trailer” / Apple TV+

I’ve wanted to read the book for a long time, and hope I’m able to before this comes out. Because whoa. Great trailer.



“Let’s Visit the Human Composting Facility” / Ask a Mortician

Death is seen as a tough topic of discussion here in the U.S. But hey, that’s silly. Right? We’re all gonna die. Every single one of us. Why would we not talk about a universal experience like that?

One question I’ve about it for a while is this: knowing what we know these days about, say, pollution, and contamination, and just general environmental science, does it make much sense to continue opting into a binary system when it comes to handling our dead?

Typically, here in the U.S., we either burn the body, or we pump the body full of chemicals, stuff it into an expensive box, and shove it in a small hole in the ground that’s already overcrowded with other expensive boxes.

I don’t think it’ll take much time for anyone following critical thought to conclude that, A) it hasn’t always been like this, and B) we can do better.

I’m thankful that I live in a state that has given it the okay (currently, only six U.S. states have approved human composting; please urge your state legislators to propose and approve it), because human composting—which is detailed in the video—is definitely how the sack of flesh and bone I’ve been carrying around will be handled.

(P.S. Human composting plays a key role in the short story I’m drafting at the moment; probably a ways off from sharing it on here, but it felt worth mentioning.)





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