Month: July 2005

We must be closing in on peak carrying capacity for the planet, because it seems that authors are increasingly having a difficult time making up new names. Writers like Jonathan Safran Foer and our own Shannon Olson are giving their characters names that are really easy to remember–their own. Now Bret Easton Ellis has a book about a guy named Bret Easton Ellis, and it’s not a memoir. But it does draw upon Ellis’ life and previous novels for material, sometimes to highly creepy effect, as when a literary psychopath tries to act out the violent plot of the author’s American Psycho. This ghost story, set in a decaying and drug-addled suburbia, seems to find an older and wiser Ellis regretful about the topics (drugs, violence) his earlier works romanticized.

Berger is on the doorstep of eighty now, and for decades he has been one of the most elegant writers in the English language. He’s a master of the elegy and the vignette, and whether in the form of fiction or essay, his work has always had the long-view precision of a satellite photo. Berger’s enduring themes have been the power and pull of memory, the tangled messes and miracles of history, and human relationships. His latest, Here Is Where We Meet, which is described as “a fiction,” combines semi-autobiographical reveries and affectionate portraits of a diverse cast of characters from history and the authorÕs still-vivid imagination. Berger’s narrator spends a good deal of time meditating on a lavish dinner preparation for friends, and ranges across Europe and Asia in search of the dead that “don’t stay where they’re buried.”

Now that even the Boundary Waters is full of cell phones and GPS units–there’s probably even a laptop in a dry bag up there somewhere–it seems there’s no escaping technology. MIT student Eric Brende started to question his addiction to this higher power source, and decided the only way to escape technology’s grip was to really get away. He and his wife moved to an off-grid community of Amish-like people he calls the “Minimites,” who use no electric machines and run a barter society exchanging homegrown food and goods. Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology chronicles the eighteen months Brende and his wife lived in the community. Apparently, they missed a few things; he now lives in St. Louis, where he works as a rickshaw driver. Coffman Memorial Union, 300 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-625-6564; www.bookstores.umn.edu

X may have emerged from the trash-strewn bowels of L.A., but it always had its finger on America’s rural music traditions. In fact, this offshoot of the legendary punk band excavated those roots long before MTV Unplugged and O Brother Where Art Thou made it cool to strum acoustic instruments and act like a hick. The Knitters’ 1985 album “Poor Little Critter on the Road” not only had a great title; it also made a bunch of hipsters think twice before trashing any tune with a banjo or accordion in it. Twenty years hence, the Knitters are back with a new album and returning to the road (like most all bands from twenty years ago, it seems, including their “parent” band). If X’s recent shows are any indication, these players haven’t lost any of their fire, and, in many ways, have only gotten better.

With his snarky stage name, a voice you’ve got to learn to love, and a maddening compulsion for jumping genres, Declan McManus has become a pop music icon almost in spite of himself. Why? Because his songcraft, when it jells just right, has yielded some of the best pop of the last several decades. From organ-driven dance numbers like “Pump It Up” to smoldering ballads like “Alison” and the best antiwar anthem ever, “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” Costello’s top-drawer tunes are simply unforgettable. His most recent album, the roots-tinged “The Delivery Man,” is an up-and-down affair with fewer instant classics than we hoped for. But hey, at least it’s not another collaboration with a string quartet or Burt Bacharach. 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul; 651-690-6700, www.stkate.edu/oshaughnessy

A couple of years ago, a scorching bit of celebrity gossip shocked the MPR-listening, granola-eating, prairie grass-planting fans of the contemporary folk scene: Singer-songwriters Greg Brown and Iris DeMent had secretly married. The couple keep their relationship strictly off the record (although once when we called Brown’s Iowa farmhouse, DeMent answered the phone, and we could hear breakfast cooking in the background), but the pairing is picture-perfect. Like Brown, DeMent writes smart, knowing, sometimes political, sometimes achingly personal songs set to warm country-folk music. We love her incomparable voice, and we’re hoping to hear it paired with Brown’s rumble sometime after they own up to their connubial affiliation. 651-290-1221, www.fitzgeraldtheater.org

The best wedding bands don’t even know the chicken dance, or anything by the Village People. In conjunction with the Minnesota History Center’s “Happily Ever After” exhibit, this year’s outdoor Nine Nights of Music series showcases dream wedding bands playing music from around the world. August’s lineup opens with Piper’s Crow (above), a local Celtic group that reels off tunes from Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton traditions. As August unfolds, we’ll hear how other cultures accompany their nuptials. Tarang, a Bhangra band, plays traditional Hindi celebration songs (August 9), Cafe Accordion Orchestra offers heady European airs (August 16), and the Bulgarian Orkestar Bez Ime closes the series with the moody romance numbers of the Balkans (August 30). 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; 651-296-6126; www.mnhs.org