I’m working on a review of Colin Asher’s forthcoming book about the impact of prisons on American music. There’s a lot to chew over in its quick three hundred pages.

It’s an ugly history, unsurprisingly. A lot or racism and class hatred all the way through. I loved Colin’s biography of Nelson Algren and this one is written with the same care and scrupulous research. A through-line might be the steep odds people who are born poor and challenge authority face in this country. It’s likely the same in other countries but the two books detail the particulars inherent to this one.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Elmo Hope after learning about him from the book. His story is perhaps the lowest key but also in some ways the saddest. This is a guy who just wanted to play piano but New York City wouldn’t let him. He drifted into addiction and died young.

I’ll have more to say once I finish writing my review but in the meantime here’s a conversation I had with Asher about it.

From William Gass’s Middle C

When young and full of fellow feeling, Professor Joseph Skizzen had been tormented by the thought that the human race (which he naïvely believed was made up of great composers, a few harmlessly lecherous painters, maybe a mathematician or a scientist, a salon of writers, all aiming at higher things however they otherwise carried on)…that such an ennobled species might not prosper, indeed might not survive in any serious way—symphonies sinking like torpedoed ships, murals spray-canned out of sight, statues toppled, books burned, plays updated by posturing directors; but now, older, wiser—more jaundiced, it’s true—he worried that it might (now that he saw that the human world was packed with politicians who could not even spell “scruple”; now that he saw that it was crammed with commercial types who adored only American money; now that he saw it had been overrun by religious stupefiers, mountebanks, charlatans, obfuscators, and other dedicated misleaders, as well as corrupt professionals of all kinds—ten o’clock scholars, malpracticing doctors, bribed judges, sleepy deans, callous munitions makers and their pompous generals, pedophilic priests, but probably not pet lovers, not arborists or gardeners—but Puritans, squeezers, and other assholes, ladies bountiful, ladies easy, shoppers diligent, lobbyists greedy, Eagle Scouts, racist cops, loan sharks, backbiters, gun runners, spies, Judases, philistines, vulgarians, dumbbells, dolts, boobs, louts, jerks, jocks, creeps, yokels, cretins, simps, pipsqueaks—not a mensch among them—nebbechs, scolds schlemiels, schnorrers, schnooks, schmucks, schlumps, dummkopfs, potato heads, klutzes, not to omit pushers, bigots, born-again Bible bangers, users, conmen, ass kissers, Casanovas, pimps, thieves and their sort, rapists and their kind, murderers and their ilk—the pugnacious, the miserly, the envious, the litigatious, the avaricious, the gluttonous, the lubricious, the jealous, the profligate, the gossipacious, the indifferent, the bored), well, now that he saw it was so infested, he worried that the race might…might what?…the whole lot might sail on through floods of their own blood like a proud ship and parade out of the new Noah’s Ark in the required pairs—for breeding, one of each sex—sportscasters, programmers, promoters, polluters, stockbrokers, bankers, bodybuilders, busty models, show hosts, stamp and coin collectors, crooners, glamour girls, addicts, gamblers, shirkers, solicitors, opportunists, insatiable developers, arrogant agents, fudging accountants, yellow journalists, ambulance chasers and shysters of every sleazy pursuit, CEOs at the head of a whole column of white-collar crooks, psychiatrists, osteopaths, snake oilers, hucksters, fawners, fans of funerals, fortune-tellers and other prognosticators, road warriors, chieftains, Klansmen, Shriners, men and women of any cloth and any holy order—at every step moister of cunt and stiffer of cock than any cock or cunt before them, even back when the world was new, now saved with spunk enough to couple and restock the pop…the pop…the goddamn population.

It took a long time because I’m so slow, but I wanted to know what it would feel like to type that out…

As of today, K’s book is available in all the usual places, but also Dusty Groove and your local bookstore as well; just type Ornery Cuss into the search bar on their website and it’ll come right up.