Hang the DJ.

I think Daniel Handler might be one of the most overlooked writers of our time. You might know him better as Lemony Snicket, and up until a couple of years ago that was how I knew him too. I didn't hate the Lemony Snicket books, but I sure didn't love them like so many people did. And then a colleague told me I should read The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler, who, it turned out, was Lemony's alter ego. (or vice versa?) I loved The Basic Eight. It had all the themes I always look for--private school ridiculousness, intense highschool friendships, murder, psychological damage, sarcastic upscale jokes, croquet, heroines named Flannery. You really should read it. The prologue to his novel Watch Your Mouth is also required reading for all librarians: you will never think about LC Subject Headings the same way again. I think he's one of those too clever for his own good kind of writers, the kind that might stumble a little from time to time, but when they're on, they are ON, you know?

Anyway, I just stumbled on him again in Heavy Rotation, an essay collection of pieces by writers writing about the albums that have meant the most to them. Handler, God love him, writes about Savage by the Eurythmics. I could take or leave the Eurythmics (whenever I hear Here Comes The Rain Again on the radio I'm always certain, for the first eight bars, that it's actually going to be Sunglasses At Night), but the way he talks about what music can mean to you when you're young just got right into my heart:

"When you're seventeen you can drive around at midnight listening to anything and your life will change. You will quit your job or your lover, dance with someone or miss them, see someone for the first time or the last time, realize that you're not alone or you are, that you're connected or dis-, that you aren't the person you thought you were, or it turns out you are, or someone else is or nobody is or everybody, which means the world isn't fair and life isn't worthwhile or it is and it is, and all the while it's a classic or an obscurity, a gem or an embarrassment, cred or poseur, Ocean Beach or Ocean Rain, Giant Steps or Little Creatures, OK Computer, Computer World, The Freewheelin' Suzanne Vega, Achtung Baby it's Cold Outside, and then it begins to seem like a joke after all."

SWOOOON.

Heavy Rotation is totally worth a gander for a handful of lovely essays like Handler's. Also my secret writer husband Joshua Ferris talking about Ten, by Pearl Jam, because he feels exactly the same way I do (and probably the way all my friends do too): angry they sold out even though we knew they would all along, and wildly, passionately nostalgic.



Awwww, 1992 was a banner year.