I was recently added to a Facebook group for Great Pyrenees (big, white fluffy dog that weighs about 120 pounds and looks like a polar bear) lovers and started following the story of a Canadian couple who adopted an 8 week-old blind Great Pyrenees.  We all held our breath and exhaled with little, soon-to-be-giant, Annie’s first year with her human parents and Ruby, her new dog sibling. Updates showed Annie learning her way around the house, navigating stairs, and taking walks in the gorgeous British Columbia forests. These posts also showed the formidable challenges faced by people who rescue special needs pets.  If you’d like to read more about Annie’s challenges and triumphs, her dog mom has begun a heartwarming blog entitled Love Is Blind detailing their story.  Click on the link to read and have lots of tissues handy; this is a great story.

Following Annie’s updates got my librarian brain working: what types of resources do we have here at the library to help people with special needs pets. Bruce Fogle, DVM offers the most practical medical advice and some tips and tricks for helping your blind and deaf dogs adapt.  The biggest cache of information we have comes from our collection of pet memoirs – A Dog Named Boo by Lisa J. Edwards, Blind Hope by Kim Meeder, The Dogs Who Found Me by Ken Foster; and to give the kitties some equal time, Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper. The common thread running through these books is the unfailing love and deep and strong bonds formed between animals and their humans. And more often than not, it’s the humans who insist they were the rescued ones. These stories bring to mind Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” — the rescuer of the special needs pet chooses the road less traveled, and this has “made all the difference.”

Until next time, I leave you with some video of Annie learning how to use her nose to get up the stairs.

Gershon recounts how she spent two months combing the alleys, bushes and streets of West Hollywood at 4:30 every morning looking for Cleo, armed with a can of tuna and a knife for her own protection, calling out to him in song. During these early morning sojourns she makes friends with a colorful cast of characters (because who else is out at 4:30 every morning in Hollywood). Looking for guidance she visits psychics, shamans and a Santeria priest; hangs flyers, sleeps with her door open, and begins to take strange comfort in television preachers. She is also “reunited” with several false Cleos and has to rehome them.

Each journey Gershon undertakes to find her beloved feline triggers an event in her childhood or young adulthood, focusing on her relationship with past pets, ostensibly exploring the nature of the strong bonds we form with them and how animals can be our greatest teachers when it comes to human interaction. Past and present are reflected upon with equal doses of sweetness, wisdom and self-deprecation. There are many laugh-out-loud moments as she recognizes the insane measures she’s undertaking to find Cleo (one involves urine and Tropicana bottles).

And in a pleasantly surprising turn, In Search of Cleo also tackles tough metaphysical issues as the hunt for the elusive feline brings up issues of life, loss, death, and the realm of unexplainable phenomena. Does Mr. Cleo return home? You’ll have to read this highly enjoyable book to find out.

But it’s about so many more things than that and moving the plot from beginning to denouement to conclusion is simply not one of them. The Pornographer’s Poem is a dreamlike, startling, brooding, and multivalent metafictive exploration of the awakening of childhood/adolescent sexuality versus the façade of upper-middle class suburban life in the 1970s. It is also about the crossroads of art, pornography, and commerce, the implications of the camera’s or eyes’ gaze, and the subjective nature of the past and the truth, and the attempt to reconstruct both.  That is, can we ever, like a camera, retell an event as it really was; and if we can’t tell it or show it, did it ever really happen?  And is there a difference between telling and showing? Is something more truthful because we’ve recorded it and can show it or is the truth nothing more than how we remember something?

The Pornographer’s Poem is an impressive piece of thought-provoking prose that will unfortunately be marginalized into the transgressive fiction ghetto, if it gets noticed at all. This series of labyrinthine recollections from a narrator who admits to being a liar is far too complex for smut seekers, but will probably alienate those looking for a gentle read. Our nameless narrator raises all the “big” questions, especially concerning the nature of art and artifice conflated with the roles of observer and participant and what this all means in terms of the role of the artist.  If you’re participating, how can you be recording the action; and if you’re recording the action, how can you participate in it. And once the action is recorded, is it removed from the actual experience? To push the envelope even farther, Turner plays with our sensibilities by delving, with relish, into many of our arbitrarily constructed taboos, causing the intelligent reader to question why we even have these taboos. The novel’s conclusion? An apocalyptic stewing of violent sexual imagery that climaxes in what the narrator calls “white on white.” And in a Finnegans Wake-like turn, the last question of the narrative simply loops the reader right back to page one (and this narrative does invite second, third, and fourth readings). Circle? Ouroboros? Moebius strip? Ohm? Yes.

The Pornographer’s Poem was a best-seller in Canada, but has garnered very little acclaim in the U.S. I cannot stop singing this novel’s praises – it is an original, a work of incredible imagination and courage that dares to probe the darkest underpinnings of the psyche while displaying a mastery of language and literary form. Can I compare it to anything? Maybe David Lynch’s Lost Highway or Mulholland Dr. Highly and enthusiastically recommended, but not for the easily offended.

The Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library houses a surprisingly diverse collection of books about all genres of popular music. One can stumble upon anything from the history of country, rock, soul, blues, and reggae to highly-specialized subjects like a detailed study of Philly soul, a history of iconic recording studios or a price guide to vintage guitars. As I browsed, my eyes fixed on a book entitled Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends by Barney Hoskyns (781.6609 HOS).

Hoskyns starts in the early 1960s as kids with guitars from all corners of North America descended on the Sunset Strip, into the winding roads of Laurel Canyon, and eventually into the recording studios where they would find great success and be catapulted to rock god status. Hotel California reads like a novel as we follow the titular musicians from ideal-infused nascency to jaded mega-stardom. Hoskyns tells us who hooked up with whom, what classic songs were written about specific people, who had the best drugs, and whose houses were the best to crash at, the best to create at or the best to party at. We also get a glimpse into the boys’ club that abased the work of Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell and the criminally-overlooked Judie Sill.

Most important though is Hoskyns’ research and knowledge of the music – despite or due to the roiling high drama of the Laurel Canyon scene, the foundation for all folk rock was established. A canon of classic rock was created that is still a staple of FM radio. Hoskyns’ survey and analysis of this vast oeuvre is nothing short of inspiring. His enthusiastic prose made me want to give this music that I had dismissed in its entirety a second chance.

Hoskyns concludes Hotel California with the saga of record company mogul David Geffen and the formation of the Eagles, the quintessential L.A. country rock band. Did you know the Eagles were as pre-fabricated as the Monkees, calculated to yield maximum profits by capitalizing on the artistry of country rock? Hoskyns takes us on a journey where, in just a few years, we move from innocence to experience to rank cynicism as cocaine addiction becomes the defining lifestyle. The reader travels from the idyllic artist communes of Laurel Canyon to the nihilism of the just-lurking-around-the-corner punk movement ready to eradicate a generation fueled by drugs, greed and money. This is epic drama.

As I finished Hotel California I felt I needed to give the music a better listen. I went to the library’s catalog and discovered that we own many of the albums Hoskyns champions so I decided to create a soundtrack to the book. Five classic albums you can check out from the library that would be the perfect accompaniment to Hotel California are:

Crosby, Stills and Nash – self-titled – CSN were the first folk super group. Who can forget those achingly beautiful and tight harmonies and chiming acoustic guitars? There has never been a better harmony singer than David Crosby. Check out Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and Marrakesh Express.

Joni  Mitchell – Blue – Regarded by many to be Mitchell’s finest moment. Blue is a song cycle of minimalist instrumentation and lush poetry delving into the maelstrom of the many facets of relationships from infatuation to disintegration. Standout tracks: All I Want and A Case of You.

Jackson Browne – Late for the Sky – Considered by many, including Bruce Springsteen, to be Browne’s masterpiece, this Grammy-nominated album includes the iconic tracks For a Dancer and Before the Deluge.

Linda Ronstadt – Greatest Hits – Out of all the women to come out of the L.A. scene Ronstadt was the most successful. Her male contemporaries now admit she was the most intelligent of the L.A. crowd and always chose the best songs. This is a greatest hits collection; every track is golden, but most noteworthy are You’re No Good, When Will I Be Loved, and Different Drum.

The Eagles – Hotel California – Perhaps the defining album of the seventies L.A. music scene, Hotel California’s songs encapsulate the unbridled decadence that fueled the scene and ultimately caused its demise. The standout songs are the title track and the FM staple Life in the Fast Lane.

Interestingly, the same singers and musicians can be found playing on all five of these albums giving them a cohesion that defines the L.A. sound. Barney Hoskyns’ Hotel California, accompanied by a selection of the L.A. scene’s definitive albums, places the reader/listener in one of the most highly creative and recognizable epochs in American music and culture.

One can’t help but feel a certain affinity for Alex, the highly-intelligent, witty, violent, criminal, classical music-loving, anti-hero of Burgess’s 1962 novel.  By the age of 15, Alex, a gang leader, has already committed numerous assaults, thefts, rapes, vandalisms, and even murders.  Why?  Because it’s fun.  As a first-person narrator, Alex relays his life of truancy and crime honestly and with relish – violence, or ultraviolence, as Burgess calls it, turns Alex on.  Alex is a disturbingly reliable narrator.

Burgess’s ability to create a youth language comprised of equal parts of Slavic, English, Russian, Cockney rhyming slang, and baby-talk sets this work apart from pulpish texts published purely for violence junkies.  Alex and his droogs display a command of this language and adults are unable to understand them.  Burgess implies that language carries valuable political cache and the group that controls the language has the greatest power.

Alex is finally incarcerated for his crimes and while in prison becomes a model prisoner, eligible for an experimental rehabilitation technique.  Given drugs to induce a crippling nausea while watching scenes of violence renders Alex physically incapable of committing any act of violence without becoming wretchedly ill.  After just two weeks of this “treatment,” Alex is released from prison.  The prison chaplain warns that any human incapable of choosing between good and evil is no longer human, but a “clockwork orange” – organic in matter, but really just a machine.

Brilliantly structured into three sections of seven chapters each (21 being the age of adulthood), section three begins with Alex’s release from prison.  Alex comes full circle as part three mirrors part one – Alex encounters all of his former victims and associates, but he’s no longer the victimizer as revenge is exacted upon him.  He ultimately becomes a political pawn and the Ludovico technique is reversed.  The narrative concludes with our humble narrator saying that he’s simply outgrown violence and that it’s just the way of the world.  He imagines finding a wife and having some children who will probably behave just as he did, yet another type of clockwork orange.

Most of the criticism leveled against Clockwork focuses on what some readers interpret as the author’s ambivalence towards his subject matter, especially the unrepentantly violent “hero.”  Burgess doesn’t glorify gangs and violence; he suggests, without pontificating, that this thuggish behavior might be the logical outcome of a society that warehouses its poor in dilapidated public high rises and bad schools while the wealthy flock to the suburbs where, as intellectuals and politicians, they write books and conjure up rehabilitation theories about a population they’ve long abandoned.  And at Clockwork’s most basic and central core, Burgess asks the reader to think about the essence of being human, in all its beauty and ugliness.