Dearest Friends and Enemies,

I’m putting this welcome, best-of-tommywallach.com post up here at the top of the page, where it will live forever, so that I can keep all the other posts beneath it live. Here are links to some of the more interesting posts on this page, to get you started in the magical world of me:

The announcement for my Decca Records/Gather.com contest win, which got me signed to Decca

A review of my Decca EP in Newsday

My piece for The Huffington Post

The first piece I had published in McSweeney’s

One of my weekly webcasts, which have been featured on the front page of YouTube

One of the book reviews I write for Public Radio International’s World Books blog, in this case, of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s “Let The Right One In”

A Feature Article I wrote for ReadyMade Magazine about a little island off the coast of Alaska dealing with climate change

My first byline in Wired, and my first byline in Salon

An article about my awesome mom

Diary of Some Bad Years

One of literature’s greatest living authors writes his own posthumous fictionalized biography, in which he airs his deepest fears that no number of awards or marriages or friends can ever fully dispel the universal human certitude that one is a talentless fraud and an unlovable misanthrope.

Summertime, by J.M. Coetzee. Viking, 266 pages $25.95

Upon putting down J.M. Coetzee’s most recent novel, “Summertime,” one can be forgiven for running straight to the computer and calling up the Wikipedia entry on its author. After all, when a novelist as critically successful (two Bookers and a Nobel, for starters) and famously reclusive as Coetzee writes a posthumous “biography” of himself, how can you help but wonder how much of it is true?

Coetzee has written two volumes of lightly-fictionalized autobiography before this, “Boyhood” and “Youth,” each of which is written in a close third person, so “Summertime” isn’t exactly breaking new ground. Yet the primary way in which it differentiates itself from the previous two books (aside from the fact that it actually says “fiction” on the cover)—the fact that the protagonist John Coetzee is dead—makes all the difference.

“Summertime” is a finale, a summing up of a life, and the portrait Coetzee (the author, now, whom I’ll refer to by only his last name) paints of his fictional avatar is so unforgivably cruel and insulting that it borders on the parodic. If this book is to be taken as fact, Coetzee sees himself as a talentless failure who has contributed almost nothing to the world at large. But the very writing of the novel seems to contradict that claim. So how much of it is true?

Read on at World Books…

The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P, by Rieko Matsuura. Translated by Michael Emmerich, Kodansha International, 447 pages, $24.95

Perils of the Pansexual

This novel about a young woman who wakes up to find that her big toe has become a penis was a major bestseller in Japan, and it’s easy to see why. The book is titillating, disturbing without being disgusting, and reads like a self-help guide on the subjects of sex and love.

“He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess—he was a woman.”

With this short paragraph, Virginia Woolf introduced us to perhaps the most famous transgendered person in all of English literature: Orlando. “Orlando” is a fantastical reinterpretation of the life of Vita-Sackville West, Woolf’s friend and lover, told in the style of a swashbuckling romance. Midway through the book, the lothario Orlando falls into a coma and wakes up as a woman. In spite of the many ordeals she experiences in her reincarnation as a member of the fairer sex (including almost killing a man who is distracted by her shapely ankles), Orlando concludes, like Tiresias before her, that being a woman is a hell of a lot better than being a man.

The protagonist of Rieko Matsuura’s “The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P,” first published in Japan in 1993, comes to much the same conclusion, though by a far more didactic route. Kazumi is an ordinary twenty-two year old girl with a boring boyfriend and a passionate dedication to heterosexuality, until the morning she wakes up to discover the big toe of her right foot has become a penis. Her boyfriend breaks up with her, disgusted, and Kazumi immediately takes up with Shunji, the blind, piano-playing synaesthete next door. Soon after, the two of them join a traveling performance art troupe called The Flower Show.

Read on at World Books…

This is another of the videos I occasionally post to YouTube, this time featuring the lovely Kat Drake (of Cloak & Dagger). Check out her videos as well!

Oct. 12, 2009 | Once upon a time, the film projector was the teaching tool of the future. Schools all over the country purchased the temperamental, whirring machines, prompting a flood of educational shorts that offered instruction on everything from personal hygiene to sandwich making.

Kino International has just released the best of the bunch on two DVDs, titled “How to Be a Man” (1949-1970) and “How to Be a Woman“ (1948-1982), and many are as cringe-worthy as you might expect. In the hilariously hyperbolic cautionary tale “Car Theft,” two teens go from stealing a hat to stealing a car to running over a toddler in about 11 minutes.

Read on at Salon…

As God Commands by Niccolò Ammaniti, Translated from the Italian by Jonathan Hunt. Grove Atlantic/Black Cat, 400 pp, $14. 95.

In 2001, Niccoló Ammaniti’s novel Io non ho paura (“I’m Not Scared”) was published to great acclaim in Italy. The novel takes place in Tuscany during the so-called “Years of Lead, ” when both right and left-wing paramilitary groups carried out numerous acts of terrorism across the country. In 1978 alone, more than 600 kidnappings took place in Italy, mostly of Northerners transported and held for ransom in the South. “I’m Not Scared” tells the story of Michele, a nine year-old boy who, while out playing with his friends one afternoon, happens upon one of these kidnapped children in a giant hole dug near an abandoned farmhouse. It isn’t long before Michele realizes that nearly all of the adults in his small town, including his own parents, are in on the crime.

The cinematic adaptation of “I’m Not Scared” was one of my favorite films of 2004, and when I went back to read the novel, it proved equally compelling. Many books take on the disillusioning moment when a young boy first sees his father’s flaws, but Michele’s coming-of-age was particularly poignant. His parents had committed an unforgivable crime, and Michele’s struggle to reconcile his love for them with that fact lent the novel both an exterior and an interior drama.

Michele’s eventual attempt to save the kidnapped boy became at once an act of selfless bravery and of traditional rebellion, and the kidnapping was recast as yet another manifestation of the inscrutability of the actions of adults when one is young. In this way, Ammaniti seemed to me less like another Mario Puzo than an Italian David Mamet, creating a realistic criminal universe without any of the grandstanding or glorifying that gave us Michael Corleone and Tony Soprano.

Read on at PRI…

Oh, excitement! My name in the lights of Salon!

I’ve included the text of the review below the screenshot, or you can click here to read it on the site proper. Sweet!

Salon Books page with Gourmet Rhapsody...and me!

Sept. 11, 2009 | Muriel Barbery’s last book, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog,” was a massive bestseller both in France and in America. But while the story of a depressed concierge and an angsty teen girl had moments of lyricism, I found its near-constant literary and philosophical allusions pretentious, and its characters unlikable. Thankfully, Barbery’s new book (or old book, technically, as it was written first), “Gourmet Rhapsody,” manages to transform these weaknesses into strengths.

"Gourmet Rhapsody" by Muriel Barbery

“Rhapsody” is the tale of the masterly food critic Pierre Arthens, who lies on his deathbed struggling to remember the one flavor that he believes has defined his life. Every other chapter is narrated by Arthens and centers around a single food item, such as “Toast” or “Mayonnaise,” moving in the manner of a detective story toward the mystery flavor. The other chapters each feature a different narrator who has known Arthens in some capacity. Everyone from his granddaughter to his cat to the statuette of Venus in his study gets a chance to weigh in.

Barbery is at her best in the Arthens chapters, writing with all the gusto of a true gastronome. A tomato is “crimson in its taut silken finery, undulating with the occasional more tender hollow.” An octopus is “loath to divulge its secret liaisons to one’s bite,” a poeticization of “chewy.” Arthens’ evocative descriptions are balanced with passages of painful pomposity, such as when the act of watching another person eat is described as a moment “exempt from the infinite vanishing line of our own memories and projects.” However, the pretension that was so problematic in “Hedgehog” is forgivable, even enjoyable, here, because we’re allowed to dislike the protagonist.

Arthens is a man who cheats on his wife, describes his children as “monstrous excrescences,” and is effectively blind to everything but food. But it is that very single-mindedness that makes his deathbed confession such a joy to read. As his eventual revelation makes clear, Arthens has lived his life worshiping a false idol. But all monomanias are pure, and so the critic becomes a kind of tragic hero. Barbery’s triumph is in managing to tell his story while simultaneously conveying his passion. Like any good work of food writing, one puts it down a little bit hungry.

Another review for the World Books page off of PRI’s website for “The World”:

The Armies by Evelio Rosero. Translated from Spanish by Anne McLean, 224 pages, New Directions, $14.95

At the beginning of Evelio Rosero’s novel “The Armies”, the protagonist, Ismael, a retired professor in his seventies, spies on his young neighbor Geraldina over the wall between their properties. Geraldina enjoys walking around her yard naked, knowingly teasing Ismael. “I ask nothing more of life than this possibility,” Ismael thinks, “to see this woman without her knowing that I’m looking at her, to see this woman when she knows I’m looking, but to see her: my only explanation for staying alive.”

It’s a typical statement from the typical creation of a typical older male novelist. Perhaps from reading too much Marquez and Roth, I thought I could pretty well predict where the story was going: Ismael would eventually conquer the beautiful woman, body and soul, and there would be an extended (and slightly nauseating) sex scene. That instead the book would end with mass murder and necrophilia never crossed my mind. Disturbing political novels ought to carry a warning label.

Read on…

Here’s another song in my series of videos on YouTube, some of which have been featured on the front page! This is a cover of one of my favorite standards. Hope you enjoy!

This post was originally written for my arts and culture blog on Salon, Buzzkiller. All postings from that blog will also be reposted here.

The New York Times reported today on a new music festival that came and went last week in Lake Tahoe, CA. Called Wanderlust Festival, it brought together loads of famous musicians—Andrew Bird, Jenny Lewis, Broken Social Scene—with, wait for it…the world’s most famous yogis. I myself haven’t heard of any of these yogis, but to be honest, I haven’t really kept up with the scene since Berra retired. What interests me most about this festival is not the weird juxtaposition of attractions, but what it says about the live music scene in America.

As a musician myself, I rarely go out to shows anymore unless a friend of mine is playing. Truth is that high profile bands tend to charge too much (and I can always find their videos on YouTube), and bands I’ve never heard of tend to suck so bad they make me wish that sound waves didn’t propagate through Earth’s atmosphere. However, though I go to fewer and fewer individual shows, I find myself at festivals more and more often.

The website Festival Finder counts more than 2500 music festivals in its database. Many of these, such as California’s Coachella, Tennessee’s Bonnaroo, and the Pitchfork Music Festival, began in the last decade. Others, such as Texas’ South by Southwest, have become as important to the music scene as Sundance is to the film world. Every serious music magazine and website is expected to have a large journalistic presence at all of these festivals (assuming there are any journalists left to cover them). And this is to say nothing of the literally hundreds of niche festivals, such as Tanglewood (classical/jazz), Hardly Strictly (bluegrass, since ‘01), or what used to be called the Newport Folk Festival (folk, duh).

What explains the sudden proliferation? Are we seeing another painfully self-conscious Woodstock-ian rennaissance for Generation Y’ers? Is the music being played so loud that the majority of crowds are neighbors coming over to complain? Are we feeling particularly festive at watching the music industry go down in flames?

Actually, the explanation is far less hippy-dippy. Festivals mean big money for promoters and advertisers, and where the money goes, so goes the music. Because of shared costs and centralization, festivals are more economically efficient than individual shows,  for everyone involved. And it’s not just the sponsors that see benefits, but the cities that host the festivals. According to Wikipedia, SXSW is the highest revenue producing special event in Austin, with an estimated impact of $110 million dollars in 2008.

And musicians love festivals, too. According to Jon Eaton of The Spinto Band: “Festivals have a celebratory vibe that isn’t usually found at a bar or nightclub show. We are usually done with our festival requirements by 4 or 5 in the afternoonand can unwind and head out to listen to the headliners for the rest of the evening.” Glancing at current hipster favorite Andrew Bird’s touring schedule, one finds him at Lollapalooza on August 7^th, Big Chili Festival on the 9^th, Oya Festival on the 12^th, Way Out West Festival on the 14^th, and Haldern Pop Festival on the 15^th. Of his next sixteen shows, only three look to be individual shows at traditional venues. It is the summer, which is when a majority of festivals take place, but that’s still an impressive ratio.

As for the average concertgoer, the choice between a single show and a festival is easy. The first batch of tickets to June’s 3-day Bonnaroo Festival went for about $210, and a driven musicophile with good shoes can see $1000s of dollars worth of shows in that time. This year’s Bonnaroo lineup included many acts that are far more expensive on their own: Bruce Springsteen ($104 at a traditional show), Nine Inch Nails ($55), Phish ($50), Elvis Costello ($65), and a hundred other bands, comics, and performers.

This is to say nothing of the entertainment efficiency of a festival. Let’s admit it, one of the joys of seeing some past-their-prime throwback like The Beastie Boys (also at Bonnaroo) or a ridiculous self-parody like Snoop Dogg (ditto) is to be able to say you’ve seen them. So why not check off a few dozen boxes in one go? Ten years ago, I saw Lou Reed at Bumbershoot perform his musicalization of Poe’s The Raven, and I’ve been bitching about how awful it was ever since. The truth is, I only ended up watching him because there weren’t any other good bands on during that afternoon. Only at a festival can one experience the musical equivalent of channel surfing.

And now one can do it while practicing Yoga. Finally.