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"Count the page, not who writes it," and what did I write?

Anyway, the affordable version has been out for quite a while now. Like since last summer, maybe even earlier. link rotto

Baricco’s article is dangerous: it manages to make even Baricco say something agreeable. Anyway, there’s little left to analyze now: Principianti has come out, you can read it and compare it with the previous version, and moreover, you can read the private correspondence where Carver states that, regarding his opinion on his own writings, it doesn’t mean a thing. In short, it’s obvious: Carver is not Carver. The cool Carver doesn’t exist except in a lab; the real Carver is just anyone. I don’t despise him; on the contrary, like all drunks, I find him likable, but things need to be said: he’s nobody, he writes like millions of people, he has nothing minimal about him, he’s a hack and a caricature. I loved and still love Carver + Lish, but the solo Carver, no, except for a few particular stories. Then the absurd nonsense, Baricco manages to say, is that it's like this, stupid not by accident: American Psycho? What the hell does that have to do with it? Okay, one violently kills a girl, just for fun. These are the points of contact, then nothing more with American Psycho. It’s like considering one of the All Blacks a football player for Ternana just because he plays with a ball, albeit of a totally different shape and with different rules. American Psycho has a depth; even that depth makes it a bit banal (like the fact that he doesn’t kill those who truly love him - forcibly giving it a moral content - or the critique of '80s hedonism), but you can’t ignore that depth and reduce everything to blood, semen, and ultra-violence and nothing more. Anyway, I also like American Psycho.

Odradek, do yourself a favor, in your comment there’s a certain fondness for Carver, well, don’t read this. Above all, don’t read the correspondence with the editor: essentially the essential Carver, "amputated," minimal is the result of someone, red pen in hand, who cuts 60% of the stories, because this is how a new and sellable style is created. The true Carver, the one who writes what he wants and how he wants, has nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing minimal about him. When this happens in music, the intrusive record label, the major, the money to live on, everyone is ready to shout at the sellout. It can be done with a writer too, apparently. The cool stories of Beginners will be like 3-4, in their original form: applause to the editor then, who, as a great demiurge, took useless stories and made them cool... but that coolness is not Carver, Carver is a sellout. The cool one, if anything, is the editor, the one who, superficially, the hasty reviewer described as the evil one, as the one who has distorted, like the intrusive record label. Without the editor in question today nobody would know Carver, or rather he would be known for what he is: an asshole like many who wrote 3-4 beautiful stories. Anyway, don’t read it, better the blind affection.

incredibly overrated: the cool stories are cool; the not cool ones are just fucking awful. basically, the cool ones are the ones Altman used. I remember reading it right before reading Fuoco Fatuo, no comparison, Gattuso-Maradona. then, as evidenced by the letters with his publisher, placed at the end of this very book, he was a caricature, squeezed right by the balls. well, the review... write about how hard people force themselves who can’t write but want to make everyone believe, with all their might, that they’re capable. good luck.

Hey man, look, the album is playing in mp3 and I think it’s the same stuff that Radiohead put out there. The form is good; it’s the substance that’s missing. Moreover, the attention one puts into listening definitely doesn’t depend on the format, but on who’s enjoying it. The whole YouTube thing, I can’t believe it, I don’t believe that people can listen to an album on YouTube. It’s spine-chilling. Hey, have a good Sunday, you know what I mean.

nothing with a bit of electronics nearby. the coolest is the last one, the steal from the Four Tet catalog. a nearly laxative review just like the album: Punisher and Radiohead, reliability and quality.

Leaving aside the fact that if someone enjoys this record it's more than legitimate, I think that everything is almost permissible, and I have no intention of diverting anyone from their enjoyment. However, my critique – not that I care – is more than lucid, extremely lucid. Let’s start with the end goal: the ultimate goal of Wire was to play as they came, disregarding any aesthetic or structural formalism. Surrealism, I’d say. Well, I understand that one can change in 15 minutes, let alone in thirty years, and so it is not legitimate to expect a continuation of what once was – in fact, I always prefer people, including artists, who leave things half-finished, and I also generally prefer surprises – but it is reasonable to expect at least a minimum of criticism. In other words, let me explain: I’ve listened to this album amidst all the praise, everyone tearing their hair out, Ondarock packaging it as a masterpiece, and so I thought, could they have finally hit the nail on the head after all this time? I listened to it without ulterior motives or a priori judgments, and in my opinion, people no longer really listen to albums. I mean, maybe they do listen, but in a half-hearted way, with headphones on the wrong ears. I don’t know, not due to bulimia, but simply out of stupidity. Let me rephrase: since you brought up Verdena... the discussion is the same: Verdena's album has nothing to do with Verdena – in fact, if you’ve always hated them like I do, I recommend it – and precisely because it’s fundamentally not a Verdena album, it is reasonable to expect some criticism, perhaps from long-time fans… especially since the record label insisted on the crappiest song, the one most similar to the old Verdena, as the first single, with the jerk dangling from their ass. A clever decision to cover their backs, they feared. But nothing happened, not so much from the newspapers – one can buy newspaper opinions rather easily, especially when you release with Universal – but from the fans. The same goes, if not worse, for Wire. A band that has made playing poorly an art form now sounds clean, old, or mature, precise and with nothing to say, and no one raises their hand to say this album sucks. It doesn't suck to me, there’s worse, it’s just useless and I think it’s a terrible calling card to present to someone who doesn’t know them at all. Anyone who hears this record would imagine that at the end of the '70s they were a sort of XTC – whom I like, but they are not Wire, especially from a conceptual standpoint. With this, nothing, if any random person likes this record and it gives them a few nice minutes, then so be it, but for me, this homogeneity is suspicious. Not that people are acting in bad faith, it’s just that they are really out of touch with their hearts. That said, I don’t hand out certificates of stupidity, also because I like the latest Verdena album :) Have a good evening.

What "maturity" means clashes with what Wire means. Wire is the band that has made pure approximation a sublimation. Setting aside the nonsense of critics, deaf people, their best album is Pink Flag, where they played their instruments as if they had only been playing for six months; Chairs Missing, if possible, is even cooler, a perfect summary of people who can’t play but have everything in their heads and want, despite everything, to say it, regardless of the cost. Already 154 was a mature album and therefore less Wire, less badass, obviously beautiful, but zero naive, zero Wire. And this album here is that kind of album, with the exception that it’s not badass at all. It’s well-played, well-recorded, the songs themselves are quite nice, nothing memorable, but they’re not the Wire. Essentially, every day at least a couple of twisted, naive, much better and Wire-like pop albums come out in this historical moment, and obviously, they’re made by people who aren’t the Wire and who will never be the Wire. But, I don’t know, it’s sad for these dinosaur watchers – Ondarock first and foremost – who get excited over the usual dinosaurs and miss out on all the wildlife that’s kicking up a fuss, as if Wire were U2. Anyway, mediocre album and for the super-super-super fans of Wire, it’s even worse. I would have preferred they completely sucked without compromises.

Berlusconi tells Ferrara: "they choose together the times and the ways to turn farcical inquiries into an international scandal, worthy of the spy hunt for 'the lives of others' that took place in communist Germany." I always have to explain everything to you, you idiots.