"Modern Literature" a song by Christopher Klinges

     I purchased a BOSS Micro-BR digital recorder for my birthday several years ago, but never got around to actually using it. So, after that extended "prep-time", and having worked out a nominal two chord (or is it three?) progression for a song, I decided - at last - to lay down some tracks.

     Of course, the challenge of lyrics confronted me. (This was a hasty patch-it-together effort, and didn't afford me the time to personally craft verses of deep sentiment.) Since I happened to be reading the Book Review section in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal for August 27-28, 2011 at about the same time, I decided to take a short cut by selecting random words and phrases from what I was reading that provided a metrical framework for the song's lyrics.

     It so happened that the source material was a review by Joseph Epstein on "The Cambridge History of the American Novel" Edited by Leonard Cassuto, Clare Virginia Eby and Benjamin Reiss. The tome, published by Cambridge University Press, is 1,244 pages in length (which must make it a coupla cubic feet in volume) and can be purchased for $185. Mr. Epstein's review makes the purchase appear to be of doubtful value, however, to any except "scholars" driven by peculiar axe-grinding agendas of the type summarized by the following quote from the book which Mr. Epstein used in his review: "We cannot truly know a culture until we ask its disabled citizens to describe, analyze, and interpret it."

     Realizing how shameless the authors of such doctrinaire statements must be, I felt no shame in deconstructing their sub-genres of modern literature for use as "pseudo-rap lyrics" for this experimental maiden voyage with my digital recording device.

     Needless to say, I don't expect serious musicians to be impressed or challenged by the product presented here. But, I offer it nonetheless to mankind-at-large, and in particular to all charlatan or wannabe musicians, like myself, as evidence that even with pathetically limited abilities something that is "almost music" can be produced, and produce "almost delight" in the listener.

     (Sadly, with conclusions such as, "Severed from tradition and real life, literature as it is taught in universities is strictly an intramural game", I don't think Mr. Epstein derived much delight from the book he was reviewing. His well-crafted review bravely demonstrated the truism that American Literature is NOT what the universities teach about it; it is what it is.) I thank him for giving me not inconsequential material with which to develop my word game of little consequence.

     Thanks for listening. I kept it short knowing you can "row, row, row your boat" only so many times before it sinks.