Depeche Mode

When I first heard and totally enjoyed "People are People" by Depeche Mode in the summer of 1985, and subsequently abandoned the band for decades as being "uncool" (or whatever my rationale), I never would have imagined that in 2023 I'd be led back to them.  It was a confluence of events that made this happen. The enthusiastic recommendations of a few friends, the appearance of "Never Let Me Down Again" in the HBO series The Last of Us, and the release of a terrific new album, Memento Mori.

I backtracked and picked up Some Great Reward, Music for the Masses, and Violator. I'm realizing the error of my ways all those years ago. In my late teens and twenties (and maybe even to a lesser extent thirties and forties) I had a bifurcated view of music: it was either cool or not cool. What determined "coolness" was fairly arbitrary. It could be the way the musician(s) looked or dressed, the degree of "profundity" or "relevance" in their lyrics, and too much synthesizer was "fake," "inauthentic," or some such nonsense.

Truth be told, I liked a lot of what I heard from Depeche Mode in the late '80s and early '90s. Their Anton Corbijn-directed black & white videos were unfailingly artistic, and hits like "Never Let Me Down Again" and "Personal Jesus" (the ones that had MTV videos attached to them) were evocative, dramatic songs. I just wasn't able or willing to create room for them back then.

Better late than never, though.

I am currently enjoying that music I ignored, as well as the new stuff on Memento Mori. This most recent album captures that late '80s/early '90s sound while also offering the lyrical perspective of middle age. The band lost Andrew Fletcher quite suddenly last year, so it seems mortality is on their minds--but the approach is never maudlin.

Speaking of middle age problems, I am now being bothered by a whining dog, so I guess it's time to put this particular blog post to bed.

Then Again, Maybe I Won't book report

I finished reading Then Again, Maybe I Won't and maybe now I have the Judy Blume YA out of my system and am ready to return to "grown-up books."

I enjoyed Then Again... and it's yet another book I wish I'd read as a kid and not waited until adulthood to get to. Though I didn't like it quite as much as Are You There God, It's Me Margaret, it is still a more than worthy follow-up to that classic novel.

I appreciate Judy Blume's willingness to write about slightly screwed-up characters who don't always do the right thing. Tony Miglione, our 13-year-old protagonist, is a decent kid but far from perfect. He notices that Lisa, the attractive 15-year-old neighbor girl (whose bedroom window just happens to be directly across from Tony's) changes her clothes without closing the blinds. Tony becomes a voyeur, though he seems to have some guilt surrounding it, but not enough to quit. In fact, when his parents ask him what he wants for Christmas, he only requests one item: binoculars. I'm sure you can guess what he plans on using the binoculars for. I like that Judy Blume doesn't make a moral judgement on Tony's behavior and leaves this to the reader.

Joel is Lisa's brother and becomes Tony's first friend upon moving from Jersey City to the posh NYC suburbs along the north shore of Long Island. If you grew up in the '70s or '80s, you'll remember the days when your first friends where friends of geographical convenience. If the neighbor had a kid about your age, that kid became your friend. You tolerated whatever their peculiarities were. What choice did you really have? Joel and Lisa are spoiled rich kids whose self-absorbed parents don't seem to pay much attention to them. Joel likes to make prank phone calls and casually shoplift whenever he feels like it. Tony disapproves of this behavior but is too afraid to lose Joel as a friend--and be labeled a snitch--to call Joel out for his thievery. (Spoiler alert: Joel finally gets caught and this makes for one of the most satisfying scenes in the book).

The adults in the book have their own problems. Of course, we see these through Tony's judgmental eyes, but for the adult reader, it's easy to sympathize or empathize with their plights. Tony's parents are clearly still grieving the loss of their oldest son Vinnie in the Vietnam War. Tony's mother Carmela (yes, I kept picturing Edie Falco's character Carmela Soprano) is taking it particularly hard. One suspects it will be a permanent emotional scar--how could it not be? She is also having a difficult time adjusting to life as a newly affluent suburban housewife. Tony is frustrated by her behavior, but any adult reader can sympathize to some degree. Her navigation of this new environment has to be as fraught as Tony's.

Tony's grandmother is the saddest case in the book. Early on, we learn that she had cancer and her larynx was removed--hence, she cannot talk. Her primary pleasure in life is cooking for the Miglione family. However, when they move to the 'burbs, Carmela decides that grandma will no longer cook for the family (or, more accurately, the maid that Carmela hires strongarms her into appointing her--the maid--into becoming the new cook). Thus, grandma is deprived from the one activity that made her feel useful. Grandma retires to her bedroom and rarely leaves. All attempts to cajole her--even a brand-new color television--fail. Somehow, it never occurs to Carmela to let grandma cook. Though it is never stated in the book, she seems too intimidated by the maid to demote her cooking duties.

In Judy Blume novels, there is no easy resolution. She is unafraid of leaving loose ends and leaving the characters' future post-novel lives up to the readers' imagination. Tony deals with anxiety throughout the book and in the final 1/3 of the book he begins to see a therapist. There is reason to believe that he is making improvements and will be just fine. Joel is headed to military school due to his misbehavior, so his future is unresolved. Does he get his shit together or does he turn into a Trump-like narcissist? And when we leave Grandma Miglione, she is as sad is ever, though she does give Tony emotional comfort at a particularly low point for him. Judy Blume has enough respect for the readers' intelligence to allow us to create our own ending (or endings with an "s").

Blume-athon

My dip into the world of Judy Blume continues. Upon finishing Forever..., I am now reading another book I missed back in my youth, Then Again, Maybe I Won't.

Back to Forever... I enjoyed it--not to the level of Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret--but not too far off. As I mentioned in my previous post, the book deals frankly with teen sex, but in a realistic manner. Not sensationalistic, not glamorizing. That said, I can see why adults had a fit about it when it was published in 1975 and continue to have a fit about it in 2023. 

So now it's on to Then Again, Maybe I Won't, which was published in 1971. This book is essentially the boys' version of Are You There God?.... This time, the main character--Tony--is a 12-year-old boy from a middle class Italian-American family in Jersey City. His father sells some sort of electronic invention (identified as an "electronic cartridge"--whatever that is) and gets a lucrative new job. The family moves to what seems like an upper middle class suburb in Long Island. Like Margaret's move from Manhattan to the suburbs of New Jersey, it's a big change of environment for Tony. The family is in a higher economic strata, but still dealing with issues that money can't fix, namely a grandmother with significant health challenges and the death in Vietnam of Tony's older brother. 

And that's where I've left off. I'll report back later.

I think this Judy Blume/YA reading is a minor diversion and by June at the latest I'll be back to reading "grown-up" books.

That is all for now...