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Author Topic: Annie Proulx  (Read 5724 times)

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Mystery Jig

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Re: Annie Proulx
« Reply #20 on: December 30, 2012, 08:00:50 PM »

I just gave "Accordion Crimes" a go. I made it halfway through. The unrelentingly grim stories, endless descriptive lists and comical number of gruesome deaths did me in. I like to think accordions brought mostly joy wherever they went, giving hard working immigrants something to dance and sing along to. Her accordion is the harbinger of nothing but misery.

Her descriptions of 1950's Acadian culture in Maine (where I live) seemed premature in its description. Her character is cut off from his language and culture near Millinocket. He makes a daylong drive to Quebec in search of accordions. All he had to do was go to any mill town like Lewiston, Waterville or Biddeford to find it. Even when I was a kid (1970s) you could hear lots of French spoken in Biddeford (next town over from where I grew up) and my aunt speaks it today. Lewiston was crawling with Quebecois and had loads of French culture societies and private clubs. There's still a few left.

Nowadays, sure, the French is mostly gone except for people's surnames. I have at least two friends (Bolduc and St. Amand) trying to learn French as adults. Their parents knew it but were ashamed of it. Dumb Frenchie jokes abounded when I was growing up.

It's true that Country and Western was (and is) big. Hal Lone Pine and Betty Cody are mentioned. They were huge and, incidentally, I'm friends with one of their sons and Betty is still with us.

But, overall, its clearly an incredibly researched book. But why bother if everyone in it is going to meet miserable and grisly demises?
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Graham Spencer

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Re: Annie Proulx
« Reply #21 on: December 30, 2012, 09:23:16 PM »

What is the worst accordion crime you have seen or heard perpetrated. I saw a big one that was converted to a drinks cabinet.

Not entirely ruined, then  ;D :|glug :|glug
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The Blues Viking

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Re: Annie Proulx
« Reply #22 on: January 01, 2013, 12:22:57 AM »

I just gave "Accordion Crimes" a go. I made it halfway through. The unrelentingly grim stories, endless descriptive lists and comical number of gruesome deaths did me in. I like to think accordions brought mostly joy wherever they went, giving hard working immigrants something to dance and sing along to. Her accordion is the harbinger of nothing but misery.

I didn't do any better with that book, but lately I've been considering having another go at it. From what I've read here and elsewhere, it might be worth it.

TBV
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The Blues Viking

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Re: Annie Proulx
« Reply #23 on: January 01, 2013, 12:36:14 AM »

What is the worst accordion crime you have seen or heard perpetrated. I saw a big one that was converted to a drinks cabinet.

Also some pretty crummy entries on Youtube

The worst accordion crime I have encountered...well, there were two.

1. I once had my old Cajun box at an outdoor festival where I was forced to leave it in a pavillion; a secure, shady spot. Someone I knew came along and decided it could be in a better place...so they kindly locked it in my car. In the sun. For hours.

2. A couple of years ago, on this very forum, someone said something that had not occurred to me; that the soft coolers I was using as gigbags/cases might be causing the boxes grief through trapped moisture inside. So I opened the top flaps on both of them to give the accordions a bit of air circulation while I made other arrangements. My cats found the open bags and decided that the open tops were a perfect place to pee. So they did.

At least the Erica and the Double Ray don't smell anymore...

TBV
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nfldbox

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Re: Annie Proulx
« Reply #24 on: January 01, 2013, 06:33:34 PM »

I never wrote back to offer my conclusions on the book. Here they are:
   Proulx always returns her accordion focus to class and ethnicity. She gives a sense of its power in a Quebec dance in Maine but she is looking for more than loudness, which is perhaps the justification for her claims for the sexual power of the accordion. But I think the essence is somewhere else. The button accordion developed as an instrument through which untrained musicians and untrained makers could produce the music of their roots. The origins of that music came through something else, the pipes, the fiddle, the harp. It came from instruments much more difficult to play, at least at a basic level, and significantly more difficult to make. This trajectory is clear in the Irish revival, where traditional music was enshrined long before the button accordion was accepted as worthy for more than a scuff in a kitchen.  Leaders of the revival such as Sean O Riada and Breandan Breathnach completely rejected the accordion as a valid part of their movement. Part of the denigration might be that the accordion was a product of the industrial revolution. Strangely enough, most of them are produced by small makers and yet the process of making, even for a “handmade” instrument, is much more about machines and machining than it is about molding and carving, something that remains the source of the power of a violin or a wooden flute.  Thus the accordion is, as Proulx suggests, the instrument of the common man, but more than that, it makes the essence of his culture producible by him.
   Yet I find it of no small interest that while all of Proulx’s research was aided by people from the folk revival, such as Bob Snopes, her novel makes no reference to them. She is interested in only the true exemplars of working class immigration. Her rather negative view of the piano accordion responds to this view. This is in contrast with what scholars claim is the trajectory of both the members of the tradition and a good part of the revivalist reflections, which is towards what they call “perfectability.”  Improvement of both instrument and playing styles, however, is seen by the purists, who tend to be either ethnic nationalists or revivalists with a specifically antiquarian bent, as a betrayal.  One need not be too much of a progressivist to see the danger of this attitude. Thus while Proulx venerates what might be called those “true exemplars” she also seems to depict them as doomed. Thus the revivalist who would take her green accordion and improve it is nowhere to be seen as the accordion finally gets treatment similar to that dealt its owners throughout the novel, and it is scrunched under a truck.   
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Graham Spencer

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Re: Annie Proulx
« Reply #25 on: January 01, 2013, 07:20:09 PM »

With all due respect, I feel there's an element of over-analysis here. "Accordion Crimes" is a novel; like many readers of it, I suspect, I picked it up at an airport bookshop and I actually quite enjoyed it. I took it for what it is - a recreational read.  I spent my professional career analysing and discussing literature (I was a teacher of English) and frankly I read fiction these days for pure relaxation - as, I imagine, do the 90% of Ms Proulx's readers at whom the book is aimed.  It's not great world-awakening literature, it's a commercial novel - lighten up, people!

Happy New Year (if your year happens to have begun today).

Graham
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Re: Annie Proulx
« Reply #26 on: January 01, 2013, 08:10:09 PM »

Have'nt read it for some time and some of the details are a bit hazy, but how was it playable with all that cash inside it? Yeh, I know its a work of fiction but still .....and a happy new year to you Graham..
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nfldbox

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Re: Annie Proulx
« Reply #27 on: January 02, 2013, 12:21:31 AM »

I understand your feelings, Graham, but if literature never said anything about anything but itself, the "recreational read" wouldn't last long. There must be something else beyond all those doomed accordion-playing immigrants.
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Mystery Jig

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Re: Annie Proulx
« Reply #28 on: January 04, 2013, 03:37:00 AM »

...she also seems to depict them as doomed.

To put it mildly.
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