https://shorturl.at/Y8UHr

Ultimately this is a mystery, but it doesn’t read like one.

First and foremost it is set in a summer camp. Where I spent some of my best years. And that’s why I started reading it, and on that note it worked, but “The God of the Woods” is so much more.

Generally speaking I don’t read genre books, because I find the endings unsatisfactory. There’s an unforeseen twist, which makes you feel ripped off, angry you wasted so much time trying to figure it out.

Actually, I wasn’t that invested in the mysteries of “The God of the Woods,” the disappearance of two children. And thank god I didn’t find out until the very end what happened to them, because these results were not as interesting as what came before. Which had to do with friendships, class relations, personal growth, individuality.

Yes, you have a multi-generational rich family. To what degree is it using its power to subvert justice. Or is it just playing at the level rich people prefer, which is essentially private. Rich people have their own means of travel, i.e. private jets, they have their own doctors, they vacation at places you can’t afford, never mind know of, and they wield their relationships to pervert the course of justice. Real saints, right?

Actually, America reveres the rich and the poor, to be average is anathema. To have less is a badge of honor. If I had a nickel for every person who told me they grew up poor, and then let slip they went to a private high school and their parents drove luxury cars… And then there are the entitled rich who lord it over us. As if they deserve their perch. And then there are those who sit completely outside the system and don’t want to be judged, just left alone.

So, the story is set in 1975, during the second disappearance. Although there are a lot of flashbacks to 1961, the first disappearance. And it is set amongst the upper-crust, who marry for money, in an era when women didn’t even go to college, according to the book, anyway.

And you’ve got the woman who is nobody from nowhere who goes to college on a scholarship but still can’t make ends meet and ends up going back home and doing low level jobs.

She believes she’s the fiancée of a rich guy she met when she was at school. But he doesn’t integrate her into his family.

And then you’ve got the new investigator, a female State Trooper afraid of getting it wrong but wanting to get it right.

Meanwhile, adjacent to the camp the owners have a mansion where they have an annual midsummer bacchanal to celebrate the disappearance of the black flies.

So there are all these players, all this history, what is the truth?

Well, it’s ultimately revealed. But it’s the characters who make the book so interesting.

And the setting, in the Adirondacks. It’s got the feel of being off the grid. In a world where we’re hooked up 24/7, where you can get signal everywhere, this is a different era, in the boondocks. The book has the feel of the woods, of a moist mountain morning. Reading it you will not contemplate your everyday life, you will be taken completely away. And it will not be long before you just want to sit down and read. This is the kind of book that you find hard to close, that you bargain with yourself over…just a few more pages, how tired will I be if I keep reading…

This is not literary fiction, but there are some insights. My favorite is:

“They’ll be fine. The Hewitts—like Judy, like Louise Donnadieu, like Denny Hayes, even—don’t need to rely on anyone but themselves.

“It’s the Van Laars, and families like them, who have always depended on others.”

In other words, the poor, the middle class, are independent, they’re survivors, whereas the rich depend upon those on the payroll, and when left alone…

“The God of the Woods” is not the best book I’ve ever read. But it’s still August, and if you’re looking for something highly readable as opposed to the two-dimensional, simplistic beach reads, I’d put it near the top of your list.

Once again, “The God of the Woods” is readable, it does not take long to get into, and it will hook you.

From the time I read a review and reserved it a month ago at the library until it recently became available, “The God of the Woods” has become a huge seller, I’m not the only one.

Sometimes the wisdom of the crowd is right.

I reserved it because a reviewer compared it to Donna Tartt’s “Secret History,” which has a huge impact upon everyone who reads it. “The Secret History” is set at Bennington College, and the rest of the world might as well not exist. “The God of the Woods” has this same feel, but is not quite at the same level. “The Secret History” is a book you read and never forget, and I won’t say “The God of the Woods” is forgettable, but it’s written for everyone, not just the intellectual elite. You won’t have to look up words, you won’t feel like you can’t relate to anybody…

You’ll dig it.

It all comes down to exposure. An organized market. Wherein you focus a huge slice of the public on a certain number of artists.

That no longer exists.

We had radio, we had MTV, now we have chaos.

We were shown this was going to happen with Napster. Napster illustrated that the public was in control, as opposed to the marketers. Yet the major labels still believe they have power and can dictate, but they can’t, which is why there have been so few breakthrough artists recently. And with this difficulty, the majors have put their efforts behind fewer and fewer artists, leaving more and more of the business to the antiques and the indies.

So what does Lucian Grainge have to say about this? PAY ME MORE! Yes, he’s been arguing that Spotify, et al, should pay his hit acts more because they’re driving the lion’s share of the market. This is the same flawed thinking employed at the turn of the century. Rather than admit their retail model was broken, the majors doubled-down, insulted and then sued their customers, declaring the CD was forever, and anybody who wasn’t willing to buy a complete album at an inflated price was a pox on humanity.

How did that work out?

Daniel Ek came along and saved their lunch. As for those criticizing Spotify, this is the same element you see on X/Twitter, with an agenda, divorced from reality. Even Universal itself just said that Spotify’s growth outpaces competitors. Why? It’s simple, it’s a better service, whose main driver is music, constantly adding features, whereas Apple’s and Amazon’s services are based on brand loyalty as opposed to the service itself.

So in a world where the customer is in charge you need to alter your philosophy. When you can’t corral the customer, when you can’t dictate, you need to innovate, broaden your offerings, seed the customer base and allow people to find and grow acts. Which they will do, can you say CHAPPELL ROAN?

Have you seen the video from Lollapalooza? Of everybody singing along?

Take a peek:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Entertainment Weekly (@entertainmentweekly)

Was this driven by radio? TV? None of the usual outlets delivered this, it was pure word of mouth, along with choice tour slots. Hell, Roan was dropped by Atlantic before she was picked up by Island. In the old days of Mo and Joe, you only signed an act if you believed in them, and you nurtured and stood by them, otherwise your judgment could be declared unsound. But today, if it doesn’t happen right away, NEXT!

So instead of fashion, instead of looks, it’s now about the music. Does it resonate with the public?

And it’s not only teenagers consuming. Look at who is selling tickets, it’s a smorgasbord of acts. But the majors?

As for the legacy acts, it’s always based on sound. It’s not the me-too acts that continue to sell tickets, but the sui generis ones, the ones that came from nowhere and were so good that the audience glommed on to them.

So the Spotify Top 50 shows the most consumption, but not necessarily the most mindshare, the most devotion. 

Remember when FM came along and blew apart the AM model? Probably not, unless you’re a boomer, but FM not only played different music, it played MORE music.

The Spotify Top 50 does not drive consumption, it’s just a reflection of consumption, which is very different from the Top Forty radio of yore.

You need to be in all markets today, from metal to adult alternative. Because you never know what will resonate and blow up. Come on, before Zach Bryan did you think an act like that would sell out stadiums soon? OF COURSE NOT!

It’s great that labels study the data, but it’s soft skills that drive music consumption. We are not selling widgets here, nor shoes, nor some other needed consumable. No one needs any act. So how do you sell an act that people need?

Taylor Swift’s audience believes she speaks for them. And there are enough in this niche to sell out stadiums. She exists in her own vacuum. She does not cross lines. No one does anymore.

Furthermore, I’ll argue her music doesn’t spread. You either like it or you don’t. Like K-pop. Whereas someone like Chris Stapleton…if more people heard it, more people would like it. It’s not adolescent, it’s not puerile, Chris is not beautiful, he doesn’t dance, he’s just selling the music itself. You’d think Nashville would purvey more Stapletons, but the labels don’t know how to do this. They triangulate, focus on looks, all these markers that have nothing to do with music.

In order to get the public excited about music…they must see something there other than commerce. The majors don’t purvey art, but commerce. It’s a business like it was before the Beatles.

And then the Beatles came along.

Don’t count on the majors to deliver a new Beatles, they’re not built for it. It will come from the outside. Because the majors have begged-off their obligation. They used to release the best music, now they release the most commercial music, which continues to shrink in market share.

Everybody’s focused on hits when they should retool and focus on music. The majors are on an unending drive to marginalization.

Netflix trailer: https://tinyurl.com/mr86e6rk

I was into Everest before it was big.

That’s what we used to say about rock acts in the sixties and seventies, like Yes, whose first album my dentist turned me on to and didn’t break through until two LPs later, really three, with “Fragile.”

That used to be the process. You discovered and owned an act, followed them from the club to the theatre to maybe the arena after they had a big AM hit, and when the hoi polloi came on board, that’s what you’d say. Or as Bill Murray told his girlfriend in “Stripes,” “You know one day Tito Puente’s gonna be dead, and you’re gonna say ‘Oh, I’ve been listening to him for years, and I think he’s fabulous.'”

The funny thing is Tito Puente didn’t die for two decades.

But that’s not the point.

The point is someone turned me on to the book “Annapurna” in high school. I vividly remember reading it, becoming enraptured with the tale of Himalayan mountain climbing.

And then in ’96, the internet had progressed to the point where there were live reports from the Everest climbing season, and the disaster that ensued, ultimately covered in an “Outside” article by Jon Krakauer which was expanded into the book “Into Thin Air.” I was into Krakauer early too, I went to a friend’s birthday party and they gave out his first book, “Eiger Dreams,” wherein a climber falls off the Eiger and lives, along with a bunch of other climbing tales.

And about two months ago, I read Will Cockrell’s new book “Everest, Inc., The Renegades and Rogues who Built An Industry at the Top of the World”: https://shorturl.at/4IfdN which delineates the modern history of climbing Everest, and how the Sherpas have taken over the business.

And then I listened to a recent Blister podcast entitled “Adrian Ballinger on Everest, Ethics, & Unexplored Places” https://shorturl.at/93iOG

All this to say when I read about “Mountain Queen” I was eager to see it, but you don’t have to be a mountain acolyte to love this documentary.

Oh, one other Everest link, someone recently posted a drone video of the climbing route: https://shorturl.at/x7HlB

But that doesn’t compare with the visuals in this movie. Especially climbing up the ever-shifting Khumbu Icefall, where death is seemingly inevitable every year.

So what we’ve got here is an uneducated woman with a son who decided to leave her mark, do something great, by being the first woman on Everest. First as porter, then as a guide.

It’s an incredible achievement.

But then she meets this Romanian climber and moves to Hartford, CT, has a couple more kids, continues to climb Everest, and deals with his abuse.

“Mountain Queen” hit Netflix on the last day of last month, and I highly recommend it, I’d put it at the top of your list.

But I’d also say to upgrade to Netflix 4k just for this movie, the visuals are unbelievable.

It’s an hour and forty four minutes and your mind will never wander.

Lhakpa climbs the mountain to inspire her children, and it didn’t resonate with me until the very end. I wince when I read about a person doing this or that to inspire others, but when Lhakpa throws her arms in the air at the end of this doc, goddamn, it made me think I could do things too.

It’s cognitive dissonance, Lhakpa is working in Whole Foods, then she flies to Nepal to climb the world’s tallest mountain.

This is just not a story of mountain climbing, but of a person, born with no advantages who made her own way, despite the huge challenges in her path.

I’ve only been technical mountain climbing once. It’s easy until it’s difficult. Rappelling back down was no big deal. But when I had to pressure my hands against the overhanging rock as I scuffled along with my feet on this V-shaped formation laid on its side…that was too much.

I’d like to go to Everest Base Camp. I would not like to climb Everest, that’s not how I want to die. But “Everest, Inc.” says that if you’re in shape, they can now even take you up K2, one of the most difficult climbs in the Himalayas.

And it used to be Everest was remote. Now we have satellite phones, the whole world is networked. Then again, it’s pretty easy to be beaten by Mother Nature, I’ve had my own close calls.

As for non-climbers needing to make the trek for whatever reason… Everybody’s trying to prove something to the world. When in truth, it’s only about proving something to yourself. So, if you’re climbing Everest to brag…I don’t get it.

There are a lot of questions raised in “Mountain Queen.” I don’t care if you live on the water, if the nearest mountain is far away, you’re going to be intrigued and moved.

This is a winner.

https://rb.gy/tkiln8

I didn’t realize Taffy Brodesser-Akner was writing the Great American Novel until about halfway through.

Before that, I was reading in fits and starts.

I thought it was an out of control comic novel, until I realized it was not. And then I was driven to finish it.

You won’t have the same experience I did unless you’ve already read “Long Island Compromise” or stop here, because I’m going to break my rule, I’m going to tell you what it’s about.

A multi-generational Jewish family. From nothing to success and then…

Yes, Zelig immigrates from the old country, starts a styrofoam factory and everybody gets rich. But what happens to the subsequent generations? What’s it like to grow up rich, to never have to worry about money, how does it affect you?

This is a very Jewish novel. Not that non-Jews cannot enjoy it, but if you’re a Jewish Boomer or Gen-X’er you’re going to identify. This is your life.

Although the focus is on the Fletchers, there’s the families that struggle, a household driven by an intellectual. Is money everything, is it the defining characteristic of society?

If you grew up in the Jewish suburbs of the fifties, sixties and seventies…everybody knew each other, from the synagogue, from the Jewish Community Center, from camp. It was very different from today. On some level I envy my parents, they had an incredible social life, nobody I know has the equivalent today. And there was a constant run of gossip about everybody, from parents to children. We knew everybody’s wealth, how well they did in school, who they were dating. It was nearly incestuous.

They used to make movies about this. About the country club, about the small society that was everything to its members.

Who drove a Cadillac, what neighborhood your house was in, where you went to college, these were bedrock, and it’s almost like the rest of the world didn’t exist.

And we, the progeny of our parents who’d succeeded, had opportunity, we were allowed to live our dream, even though most ultimately punted, many ultimately living the same life in the same neighborhood as their parents. I had no intention of staying, I couldn’t wait to get away. But in retrospect, I was the outlier.

So the father busts his balls to earn a living so…you don’t have to focus on money, you’re not struggling. Many of my contemporaries are not doing as well financially as their parents, because they just don’t have that hunger, that drive. Their best lives were led when they were living at home, going on trips, to restaurants, living it up in retrospect. It took money, and there was enough, but this was also when there was a strong middle class, when mothers didn’t have to work unless they wanted to.

But the successful… There were choices buried in the past. As my father said, “Schnooks get sh*t on.” This is one of the reasons people hate the Jews, because they’re loud, they test the limits, they won’t take no for an answer. Why don’t they just shut up and wait their turn like the rest of us?

Well, having been excluded from so many opportunities, jobs, clubs, the Jews had to find their own way to survive. And many of the goyim don’t like it.

Is every Jew rich? Far from it. But I’ve never been to a quiet dinner with Jews, it’s like the dinner table in “Radio Days,” everybody talking over each other.

So…

With opportunity, what do you do?

Well, there’s always one who ends up running the family business.

And then one who gets into drugs and alcohol and tests the limits.

And another one who does their best to hide their wealth, they’re ashamed of it.

Once again, the Fletchers are rich. How do people treat them?

Beamer is charismatic, a star from the outside, but crippled on the inside.

Nathan is afraid of the world.

And Jenny, the baby, the only girl, wants almost nothing to do with the family. She keeps going to school, but has no friends, because she can’t accept that people are plain, like the ones she grew up with in Middle Rock, on Long Island. Ultimately she realizes friends are everything, is it too late? Has she been such a dilettante, wearing blinders, that she’s missed her whole life?

I know people like this. Who don’t have to work. They’re lost. In many cases even if they have a job. They’ve had advantages, believe they’re above the hoi polloi, but don’t really fit in, to the degree they even want to try. They’re ultimately lost souls, living on the last vestiges of the money, assets sold to keep up their lifestyle, and then a new hungry generation takes over.

“Long Island Compromise” is not the easiest book to read. Not because the words are big, but because there’s a lot of interior dialogue, nearing stream of consciousness. The book is broken down by character, and each one is gone into in extreme depth. And each has their own personality, which they’re hobbled by…aren’t we all?

“Long Island Compromise” is one of the best-reviewed books of the year, the number one best-seller in the “Los Angeles Times” last week. All of which is why I read it. I was thrilled to get it so soon from the library, but as I waded in…I truly wondered whether I could finish. At first it verged on a beach read. And then it seemed like humor took precedence. But as I got deeper into the characters, one by one, the book came alive.

“Long Island Compromise” is not a slam dunk. You’re on your own here. It’s not as breezy as early Philip Roth, yet not as dense as Roth’s later works. I could recommend many other books if you only read novels occasionally. But if you’re Jewish, if you’re willing to look at yourself…

Ultimately, “Long Island Compromise” is in Franzen territory, but without the fog of heaviness in his books. Actually, I’d rather read “Long Island Compromise” than all but the last Franzen, “Crossroads,” which is great in case you gave up on him, but the lightness of “Long Island Compromise” is absent.

I don’t know… I usually only feature recommended stuff, or stuff everybody is talking about, but Taffy Brodesser-Akner captured an essence of my life, which I wasn’t prepared for, her previous novel, “Fleischman Is in Trouble,” did not attempt to chew off as much, and I didn’t love it.

And she came up via journalism, as opposed to the Iowa Writers’ Workship. How high should one’s expectations be?

I was caught off guard, I was ultimately enraptured, “Long Island Compromise” took me away from my everyday life while ironically evoking it.

I just had to write about it.