Issa's Untidy Hut: J. D. Salinger

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie: Issa's Sunday Service, #114

This has got to be the only song (and I know as I type this someone will find another ... or write one on the spot) that mentions both Judy Blume and Jack Kerouac together . Indie darlings Belle & Sebastian have their way with modern culture; throw some J. D. Salinger in the mix and you're good to go. The title is a bit of a thunk for those terminally French challenged and, in fact, for those not. Go figure, it seems to be implying.

Or perhaps simply we are dwelling in the land of the unreliable (song) narrator? Certainly not the unreliable song writer.

Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie

Sunbeam shone, mousy girl on the end pew
You'd stay home, oh if only they let you
Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie

Municipal pool, you're a junior life saver
But you're friends are all serious ravers
Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie
Reading Judy Blume
But you came too soon

You're too tall, much too tall for a boyfriend
They run and hide, from your buck tooth and split ends
Don't be scared, like the books you've read
You're the heroine
You'll be doing fine

Wouldn't you like to get away?
Bestowing the memory of good and evil
On the ones you left behind
The heartless swine

And you love like nobody around you
How you love, and a halo surrounds you
Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie
In the Autumn cool
Say cheerio to school

Listen Dear, I've been watching you lately
If I said all these things you would hate me
Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie
At the church bazaar
I nearly went too far

Wouldn't you like to get away?
Give yourself up to the allure of
Catcher In The Rye
The future's swathed in Stars and Stripes

Wouldn't you like to get away?
Kerouac's beckoning with open arms,
And open roads of eucalyptus
Westward bound

However it shakes down, it's catchy as all get out and drops enough names to keep everyone on tip-toe.

Here's a fine live version from the Lowlands Festival in 2006:

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This week's selection from the Lilliput Review archive comes from issue #77, way back in March of 1996. Enjoy.

Names
If I had to choose
just one name
to give a girl child,
it would be Mary,
placing her at
the center of all sorrow
which is to say
where all hope waits.
Albert Huffstickler

cherry blossoms--
around grandpa's waist
a name tag

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 113 songs

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Sunday, June 26, 2011

Me and Jerome: Issa's Sunday Service, #107

Jerry

For this week's Sunday Service selection there is a little imaginative ditty by Sarah Slean about a sort of intimate meet and greet with an infamous reclusive celebrity, now deceased. His last published story, "Hapworth 16, 1924," has never appeared in book form and, it would seem, the New Yorker is utilizing its notoriety to solicit subscriptions, since its only publication was in its pages back in June of 1965.

Of course, it may be found on the net with a minimum effort, if a more than minimum amount of illegality. So it goes, as some other famous dead guy said.

So who is this Sarah Slean? Well, a major independent Canadian artist with more than a little Tori Amos influence. This particular tune was recorded for her debut EP Universe at the extremely young age of 19.

To reach into even more, for me, unfamiliar territory, the following is a YouTube video entitled "J. D. Salinger," scored to a song entitled "Mad World," a cover of a Tears for Fears song here performed by Gary Jules. There are lots of things in this world that I don't understand and that's a good thing. There is something very moving, almost tender, about the juxtaposition of song and image here. Check it out:

And, because I would never dream of disappointing 80s aficionados, here is the original "Mad World:"

Finally, of course, someone has done the Hitler Finds Out Salinger is Dead "Downfall" meme thingamabob. You have to turn on the cc captions in the lower right corner for the English "translation" and they do go by a bit fast. The Salinger haiku does get a nod and so, sacrilegious, offensive, or just plain juvenile, it's in for a penny, in for a pound.

I'm in.

The little girl on the plane
Who turned her doll’s head around
To look at me.

J. D. Salinger

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This week's feature poem shows how a brief work can perfectly capture a moment - when I use the word sensual to describe it, it is no exaggeration. Originally it appeared in #85 of Lilliput Review back in 1997. As far as I can ascertain, it's the first poem from that issue I've featured and I thought I'd covered each issue at least once.

Cutting
   My father leans close
   to my ear, a root beer
   barrel rattling over
   back teeth, he fumbles
   against the rust clasp
   on a blue plastic case,
   scissors and black combs
   within clear pockets

Mark Forrester