Belatedly

-- I would like to second Von's recommendation of A Short History Of a Small Place - it is unpretentious, inviting, and genuinely funny. It took me forever to finish reading it, not because I wasn't dying to, but because reading time nowadays is scant. If they had a reading of it by Arlo Guthrie, I would have bought that in a heartbeat because he would have read it absolutely prefectly, cf. Alice's Restaurant. Anyway, to tempt people to the book (particularly the people reading this who sing), let me give you a sample:

We were trated to a minute or two of coughing, sneezing, nose blowing and general uneasiness among the congregation once Reverend Wilkinson had returned to his chair, and following some elaborate arm waving between Mrs. Rollie Cobb at the front of the chapel and Miss Fay Dull at the back of it Mrs. Cobb got herself properly set and anchored at the piano and then assaulted the keyboard but with such limited success that she had to break off and start in again and the second time around she got underway in fairly good form. However, Mrs. Cobb commenced to put a little pace on the melody directly and it became so frantic with embellishments and excesses that Miss Fay Dull had a difficult time cueing the sopranos and the altos, which was all she could cue since the baritones were still outside on the landing and could not see her from there. So the sopranos and the altos simply jumped aboard at the first available chink in the tune and the baritones waded in shortly thereafter and they all managed to draw together presently into what sounded very much like singing. This particular selection called for a solo and Miss Fay Dull had nominated herself, so once she choked off the competition to her satisfaction she made a fine entrance into the melody and brawled with it all the way to the refrain where the rest of the choir showed up to help her vanquish it entirely. Then they all sang together for a couple of bars before things got a little uptown in the middle and called for the baritones and sopranos to bark back and forth at each other while Miss Dull trilled away between and underneath them and Mrs. ROllie Cobb bludegeoned the whole business with some rather ponderous fingerwork. We were entrained in this fashion for what seemed an inconsiderately lengthy spell and by the time the melody began to shut down, the whole business had turned into a kind of slilgfest for soprano, choir and Seventh Day Adventist and we were pretty much relieved to see the animosities brought to a close, especially Daddy whose ears had become as red as firecoals

On a separate note, Richard Powers is a bloody genius, and for some reason he has chosen to write about all the topics dearest to my heart.