Hot Dog Code Sings Greatest Palace Music

I must confess from 1996 to 2001 I was a Will Oldham freak. I bought all his CDs, Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Palace Music, even the odd instrumental EP. Then, with no particular incident, I just felt all full up on WO. This pattern repeats itself in my life. A series of all-consuming obsessions.

I read about a dozen Jerome Charyn novels over a couple of years. I started with The Good Policeman, which remains my favourite, maybe for sentimental reasons but also it is kicks off a run of weird and pleasurable crime novels. Charyn, 88, is on another weird and pleasurable run of books. Since The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson in 2010, he’s been novelizing the lives of historical figures, from Abraham Lincoln to Rita Hayworth. His latest (by my count; he is truly prolific and as a slow reader, I have long since given up hope of keeping up), Maria La Divina is a novel of the great Maria Callas.

I always call his 10-part Isaac Seidel series a cop opera, and MLD justifies it. Callas, a kid from the Bronx with bad eyes and a sweet tooth who rises to global stardom, would be a classic Charyn invention. In my mind, I refer to the book as Maria the Wild, after the first (or second) book in the Isaac series. May Jerome Charyn write many more books!

Over the years, since its 2005 peak, my CD collection has gradually dwindled to a pair of crates. My once precious run of Will Oldham discs is long gone. My only CD player is in a minivan and might be the lumpy vehicle’s one charm (aside from the fact that it holds my entire family). A few years back, after one of her famous yard sales, my sister gave me a copy of Bonnie “Prince” Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music, a 2004 recording of Will Oldham’s early lofi songs with more robust arrangements & production values. I didn’t even know it existed. It’s probably fairly considered Early WO at this point.

In March, I read The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim. It came at the recommendation of the wonderful poet Matthew Walsh. Four English women rent an Italian castle for a month and—I was going to say it changes them, but I think it would be more accurate to say it reveals them, even to themselves. Now that April is over, you should read it. Like any NYRB Classics I get no points for saying it is well worth your time. That’s the whole point of NYRB Classics. Whenever I don’t know what to read next, I look for their trade dress. An Enchanted April makes a great companion read to more recent fave Any Four Women Could Rob the Bank of Italy.

I pulled BPBSGPM this week, which started out hot. I spent Monday, windows down singing along (loudly) to unfamiliar versions of songs I knew by heart. This too, I recommend