overlooked genius

Ummm..err..ahh...Pet Sounds?

 

I've heard people say it's great, but I've never listened to the deep cuts, only the two singles. "Wouldn't It Be Nice" doesn't do much for me and "Sloop John B" rivals Mark Twain's "Punch, Brothers, Punch" couplet in its ability to lodge in one's brain incessantly. Though I understand they didn't write the latter.

 

deerhoof.

find it. choo choo, beep beep.

 

Great damn thread.

Before I go to bed, I'll throw out two, with perhaps more later:

Marshall McLuhan

Was trendy back in the 60's. He's best know for two phrases: "The Medium is the Message" and "The Global Village" but his book "The Gutenberg Galaxy", a history of the print medium and its cultural ramifications is, in my opinion, one of the greatest books of the last 50 years. His prescience about electronic media and the impact of computerization on the way our senses interact with our surroundings was way before his time. Tom Wolfe wrote a fabulous essay in the late 60's (in Esquire, I think), called "What If He's Right?"

The McGarrigle Sisters

They have only done ten albums in thirty years, two of them in French. They were born into an Irish/Quebecois bilingual family and their music reflects their dual roots. Rufus Wainwright is the daughter of Kate an Loudon Wainwright 111.

Their first album "Kate and Anna McGarrigle", released in 1975 is almost perfect. The best known song on the album may be "Heart Like a Wheel" but for my money, "Go Leave" and "My Town" may be two of the saddest love songs I've ever heard.

This thread is why God invented SportsJournalists.com.

Thanks Writing Irish.

 

wi -- "Caroline No"?
JR -- Kate and Anna do a great "Il Est Ne" on the Chieftains Christmas CD.

Anyway, I lurve, luff, and loave this thread, so here are a couple more.

Albert Murray: His trilogy about growing up -- Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, The Seven League Boots -- I would recommend to anyone, and there isn't much point in loving American popular culture if you haven't read The Hero And The Blues.

Mississippi John Hurt -- A day I don't start by listening to his "Frankie" is a bad day.

 

I'm an absolute acolyte of both Mitchell and McPhee, but feel as if they're both well-enough known to escape inclusion here. They're "writers' writers," certainly - as damnable and limiting a phrase as that is - and are still hot properties in the MFA workshops that now clutter America.

I also considered this morning Henry Roth and Hubert Selby. "Call it Sleep" and "Last Exit to Brooklyn." Overlooked genius? Or one-hit wonders?

Here's one for sure: Breece D'J Pancake.

Of whom Kurt Vonnegut said:

"I give you my word of honor that he is merely the best writer, the most sincere writer I've ever read. What I suspect is that it hurt too much, was no fun at all to be that good. You and I will never know."

A suicide, of course, but without the masterwork that immortalized Toole.

Here's the little wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breece_D'J_Pancake

Oh, and the Joyce Carol Oates review of the collection:

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/13/books/pancake-stories.html

 

I thought about listing Pancake. I read one of his collections - but I was pretty young - and didn't care for it very much.
Pancake was certainly a troubled soul.

 

I would say Brad Renfro's turn in The Client was genius -- but I'm not sure it was overlooked.

 

This meme is getting seriously strange.

 

WI,
I've read both Roth & Selby and think they fall into the "one hit wonder" category. Great books, however.

Roth may hold the record for writer's block: 60 years between Call it Sleep and his next novel.

Here's my all time favourite literary one hit wonder though

Written by French author Alain-Fournier in the early 1900's, Le Grand Meaulnes is one of the great French novels of the 20th century but malheureusement, M. Fournier was killed in WW1.

Le Grand Meaulnes (in my opinion) is to French literature what The Great Gatsby is to American literature.

There are a couple of English translations but none really do the novel justice.

 

I threw him out there on the Books thread, but Dos Passos' "USA" is the great underread masterpiece of American literature.
Cheers to whoever it was that called Charles Portis's name, too.