There’s a lyric from a “Basement Tapes” Bob Dylan song—not mentioned in the often-silly blitz of obvious and ephemeral Dylan posts that’ve clogged social media for the past month, mostly in service of the lackluster biopic A Complete Unknown—that I find appropriate for the first week of January. “Odds and ends, odds and ends/Lost time is not found again.” I’m not referring to the CIA/FBI conspiracy theories dark-clouding the truck massacre in New Orleans (increasingly—as opposed to 40 years ago, aside from the JFK rub-out—my mind’s open to most skeptical examinations of terrorist attacks, subway burnings, and one-off explosions, mainly because the barely-a-pulse national and local media keep presenting different “facts,” which are more similar to off-hand Twitter posts than, say, the reporting of Don Bolles, Jimmy Breslin, Murray Kempton, Mark Reutter and Seymour Hersh decades ago. The 1-A story on the print edition of Friday’s New York Times read: “F.B.I. Is Confident Driver In Attack Didn’t Have Help.” That helps! Now, I’m confident, too!
My aim is true, but prosaic compared to the inquisitions and demonstrations and acts of vengeance that dominate what a subset of Americans call the “American conversation.” Under the tree on Christmas Day, I received many splendid gifts from my family, most notably an intricately hand-crafted cuckoo clock from Bavaria (it’s not kitsch, quick-on-the-gun frivolous “National Conversation” addicts, a work of art that’s already livened my day on the hour, not only the glorious sound but dancers twirling around; it’s touchy though, one sudden foot-stamp and a re-set’s necessary) but also a curious book of short stories by “outsider” writer Donald Ray Pollock, now 70, whose Knockemstiff was published in 2008.
Pollock’s tales from his native Ohio are crammed with alcoholic whores, pill-popping adolescents, busted-up cars, steroid-infused exhibitionists, down-on-their-luck-forever residents stuffing lard sandwiches down their gullets because they’ll die if they forget to eat, aggressive and under-a-minute cherry-popping, stolen stashes of illegal substances and parents who wish their kids were dead (and vice versa). There are no happy endings in this land of fatalist hillbillies. And though the collection of stories, intertwined with reoccurring characters, is too much peach pie with canned whipped cream in the second half, it’s a solid recommendation.
Almost immediately, the prose reminded me of Hank Williams, not only his dire “Lost Highway” (from which I’m sure Dylan lifted the words “rolling stone”) but also his mid-20th century radio shows, with Hank hawking products—Mother’s Flour—I’d never heard of, sort of like Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s. The only difference is the former is HANK WILLIAMS.
In “Pills,” Pollock writes: “We broke in through the bathroom window. Pressed into the gray scum of the tub, our boot prints looked like those fossil feet frozen in rocks that my crazy cousins said the Devil had planted all over the world to trick people into believing that we came from frog shit and monkeys… A pair of red panties was balled up on the linoleum floor, and Frankie stuffed them into the back pocket of his coveralls. ‘Let’s don’t be fuckin’ around here,’ I whispered. Every creak of the old house sounded like a gunshot to me.”
I wonder if onetime Clinton, Inc. apologist James Carville, that octogenarian pugilist who’d flatten Karl Rove (still, still! given space in The Wall Street Journal, an out-in-the-open conflict of interest that’ll keep my nose twitch twitching until he’s let go) is a fan of Pollock. Their patois isn’t at all dissimilar.
Carville wrote (I assume not ghosted) a humorous 2024 election wrap-up on Jan. 2 in The New York Times. Like so many op-eds that pass for profundity, I’m not sure if Carville was pulling the legs of readers; not entirely sure since the advanced senior citizen is a throwback. Anyway, Carville first reprises his #1 hit—“It was, it is and it will always be the economy, stupid”—before settling into his already-dated advice for Democrats. He writes: “Podcasts are the new print newspapers and magazines. Social platforms are a social conscience. And influencers are digital stewards of that conscience. Our economic message must be sharp, crisp, clear—and we must take it right to the people.”
Who knows if Silent-Generation Carville mouthed a “Right On!” or waggled his 80-year-old fingers into a peace sign, but if Democrats need Bill Clinton’s 1992 rabbi to say, “Social platforms are a social conscience,” hoo boy, there’s trouble ahead, and I’m a-gonna scram. I assume Trump and his over-zealous “kitchen cabinet” will create their own difficulties, but Dems ought to purge anyone over 60 from their strategic team. That’s unsolicited advice for which I’ll charge just a shiny, shiny quarter.
