Book reviews

DOn MCLEESE

Slippery Steps: Rolling and Tumbling Toward Sobriety

ICE CUBE PRESS

You may have read one of Don McLeese’s previous three books, or perhaps you’ve stumbled upon one of the many pieces he’s contributed to publications like The Rolling Stone, Chicago Sun-Times or No Depression. In his newest release, Slippery Steps: Rolling and Tumbling Toward Sobriety, the University of Iowa faculty member confronts the invisible entity present throughout his illustrious rock journalism career: alcoholism.

Since the age of 13, alcohol consumption was a regular part of McLeese’s family vacations, celebrations and life events, which only grew more frequent as he aged. Eventually, McLeese’s drinking brought him to the point where he chose to begin Slippery Steps: a drunken night at his West Des Moines home where he stumbled down his porch steps and passed out in the yard, covered in his own vomit.

It’s a daring endeavor to write something that covers as many years and as many personal details as Slippery Steps does. I reckon that there is no quick and easy way to do it. And while McLeese captured my attention with his personal narrative far longer than many others could have, this book still got tedious at some parts, relying a bit too much on previously stated information.

And that’s a fair criticism to say in a review. But it shouldn’t be the reason you don’t pick up this book. McLeese, through eloquent narration, thoughtful reflection and a few rock and roll stories, provides us with a non-judgmental lens through which to take stock of our own relationship with alcohol, or anything else we may be leaning on a bit too much.

The magic of this book is that our personal relationships with alcohol are never framed as anything other than personal. Even as McLeese delves into his sobriety journey, he never projects or assumes his readers are in the same place. From the beginning to the end, the tenet McLeese holds onto the tightest is that every situation looks different to the people outside of it. The only one who can know if it’s time for you to stop drinking is you.

That said, sober-curious readers who feel a bit too intimidated to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting—this book may especially be for you. Not only does McLeese discuss how he stumbled (pun not intended, but necessary) into AA, but he also talks in detail about each

MarK LEVInE

Sound Fury

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS

of the steps, the logistics of finding a sponsor and how he did it all as a person unaffiliated with religion.

Alcohol is a part of American culture and it permeates even deeper into Midwest culture. And to deny its omnipresence is to lie about the facts. McLeese isn’t in the business of lying. His honesty, transparency and air-tight narration make Slippery Steps not only an informative read, but an enjoyable one. —Lily DeTaeye

Things not to do: read Mark Levine’s Sound Fury while battling a nasty rhinovirus. Here’s why: Levine (deftly) uses so many literary devices simultaneously that one really needs the full use of their faculties to experience Sound Fury. In my first round of reading, while sick, I thought I’d be compelled to warn that a book of poetry like this is for well-read intellectuals, people with encyclopedic knowledge of poetry and ships and religion THE MaGIC OF THIS BOOK and workers’ rights—but IS THaT OUr PErSOnaL that didn’t turn out to be the rELaTIOnSHIPS WITH case. I did have to use a dictionary. A lot. But a cleverer aLCOHOL arE nEVEr reader than me would have FraMED aS anyTHInG read the notes that Levine OTHEr THan PErSOnaL. EVEn aS MCLEESE left stating that many poems are inspired by the work of Robert Herrick, a 17th cenDELVES InTO HIS tury cleric and lyric poet, SOBrIETy JOUrnEy, HE and Alexander Pope. This nEVEr PrOJECTS Or is probably the most background information necaSSUMES HIS rEaDErS essary for getting into the arE In THE SaME PLaCE. weeds with Levine’s heady new book. These poems are interested in identity and the way that both sound and story—culturally accepted myths and nursery rhyme—influence us. They investigate the domestic on a macro level and pop-culture on a micro level. Somewhere between the double-entendre of nearly every title and the exacting internal rhymes and you can’t help but get lost in the matrix Levine builds, line by line. Levine flirts with intertextuality somberly but joyfully with responses to Robinson Crusoe (“Without Robinson”), Robert Herrick (“His Poetrie His Pillar”), Zane Grey (“Zane Grey”) and surely more than I can parse out in the book’s anchoring opus, “Dire Offense,” which is 12 pages long and is a sometimes tongue-twister, sometimes documentary.

Worried for my own brain fog, I started to read the poems aloud and I want to urge all readers to do so. There is a magic (not unlike reading Dr. Seuss’s Fox In Socks if reading that book made you feel like an intellectual) in the way the the words move around the mouth, for example, from “Dire Offense,” “The EMTs are on him; but their art / Is no match for a bastard’s flatlined heart. / Time Fate Love Beauty Power Ill-Nature Steel / Muse Goddess God Jove Neptune Hermes Sol / Ulysses Dido Proculus Propitious / Megrim Maeander Cynthia Thalestris / Sylph Sylphid Nymph Gnome Zephyretta Umbriel / Fay Fairy Pam Poll Ixiom Ace Ariel / Brilliante Damon Dapperwit Clarissa / Sir Plum Sir Fopling Florio Crispissa / Belinda Betty Basto Partridge Spleen” this list of mythical characters goes on and slowly adds adjectives and qualifiers, and is followed by “Playing at violence with sharpened sticks is delaying / Onset of incipient male horror, saith the experts. Once at / Recess on the dirt patch, you see, our boy wrests / Weapons from beneath his blouse, shouting.”

I think I could revisit poems like “Bantam,” “Los Toritos” and “strange shadows on you tend” daily and get something new from them. There are poems anchoring this book to Iowa City (“Auto”), poems on workers’ rights (“On Himselfe,” “Cape Cadaver”) and poems about marginalized people in general (“Poririo Diaz,” “The Vine”). This dance between sounds and imagery creates a depth in the poems that I wasn’t prepared for and I am excited to revisit this volume (and Levine’s other work) with the time and insight they deserve. —Sarah Elgatian

rOBIn HEMLEy

Oblivion

GOLD WAKE PRESS

What to say about Robin Hemley’s Oblivion? The University of Iowa Writers Workshop alumni’s 16th book was released this year on Gold Wake Press. And although it’s short in pages, the novel is not short on big ideas.

Oblivion follows a nameless writer who dies and passes into The Cafe of Minor Authors in the realm of Oblivion; a purgatory for authors who could never quite make it to greatness. Here, our narrator meets Jozef, a guide who allows him to peak into the lives of his ancestors and his literary role model: Franz Kafka. Soon, our narrator learns that he has a chance to escape The Cafe of Minor Authors if he writes something worthy of transcending Time. But he must beware, if he spends too much time in a certain place, he will become a dybbuk and be trapped forever.

As interesting as the premise is, plot-driven readers should beware. Intermingled with our narrator’s journey to writing something that will help him escape Oblivion, is a whole lot of contemplation on ego, ancestry and writing, of course. Throughout the novel, Hemley delivers carefully crafted paragraphs that meditate on the solitude of artists. Specifically, how the narrator became so obsessed with his own self-image, that he is still chasing his masterpiece even in death. The result is a cerebral and melancholy tale that reads like a warning. Maybe even a parable.

Or perhaps you could call this novel an “idea story,” like the ones that the narrator describes one of his graduate school professors despising. “Idea stories” are stories that use narrative to describe a bigger truth. As Hemley writes, “Narrative illusion, no matter how well done, is artifice, after all, written by someone with ideas. Some of us like to coax ideas out of hiding, suggest that they should just be themselves. For such writers, we have essays, but some of us want both ideas and narrative.”

Oblivion fits this description to a T. Not only are we handed thoughtful reflection on the solitude and continuous pain of artists; we are then given space to contextualize it in a beautiful fictional setting with characters we care about and cappuccinos that never get cold.

Admittedly, I’m a plot-driven reader. And even though this book is full of tangents and world-building, there was enough forward momentum to keep me interested. By the end, our plot is wrapped up in a bittersweet bow and we’ve enjoyed getting to know our narrator’s intimate thoughts on his life, death and art.

Overall, this book is balanced well. Even in the most severe moments of the novel, there are small oases of humor scattered through. Whether it’s the seemingly pointless pleasantries exchanged between dead authors or unhinged sights our narrator experiences as he peers into the lives of his ancestors, Hemley doesn’t ever let us wander too far into reflection that we forget to come up for air.

Oblivion is the perfect novel for readers who like to think, readers who are interested in creative speculations on the afterlife or readers who just enjoy a little magic. If you’re a fan of “Midnight in Paris” or The Metamorphosis, this 2022 release might be the perfect addition to your shelf.

Mary L. COHEn anD STuarT P. DunCan

Music-Making in U.S. Prisons

WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS

In the 1864 novella Notes From the Underground, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky proposes the proto-existentialist notion of “perverse freedom.” There are never no choices in life, because one can always, at any time, choose to act against one’s own self-interest—to act in a way that’s contrary to all expected motivations.

Dostoevsky himself spent several years in prison, and many of the themes of his works draw from that experience. The question of freedom, and the leaps the human mind can make when freedom is withdrawn, are precious to his philosophy. When all other choices are taken away, an incarcerated person, desperate to retain some sense of identity, often push against societal expectations.

We call that agency.

In Music-Making in U.S. Prisons: Listening to Incarcerated Voices (November 2022), University of Iowa music education professor Mary L. Cohen and co-author Stuart P. Duncan explore the ways in which music has been and can be leveraged to offer incarcerated people a third path between perceived capitulation and perverse freedom. They lay out the rich history of vocal and instrumental ensembles in prisons, dating back over a century. And, crucially, they tie the humanization of prisoners to the greater prison abolition movement.

The logic behind the work seems so simple: When incarcerated people are given the opportunity to form community and to practice engaging with the outside world, they will be better equipped to reintegrate into society on their release. On its own, prison is profoundly isolating and drives counter-social behavior. Integrating music offers a tangible experience of the value of resonance over dissonance. Musicmaking is a communal act that drives pro-social behavior.

Cohen and Duncan lay out this and other arguments with clarity. But it’s in looking back at the past that they challenge our current way of thinking. These aren’t new ideas; much like the well-documented value of teaching the arts in schools that routinely gets swept under the rug as the “purpose” of public education is debated and challenged, so too have long-standing prison music programs fallen to newer philosophies privileging a punitive approach.

One of the many successes of this book is its demand that the reader challenge their 21st century notion (warped by the rise of for-profit prisons and mandatory minimum sentencing) of what purpose incarceration is meant to serve. The only way forward is through affirming the humanity of those on the inside, because people who have been taught they are not human can never succeed on the outside. Yet this renders the basic inhumanity of the prison system utterly indefensible.

This is a difficult needle to thread. How can wardens and other prison officials be pushed, in a sense, to act against their own best interests—to accept programs that strive to make them irrelevant? Cohen and Duncan don’t really try. The societal good is taken as a given (and I, for one, agree). As such, this is far more useful as a guide to those trying to do the work than as a means of converting the unconvinced.

Overall, it is a crucial read for anyone pondering the ethics of a carceral society, and music educators looking to decentralize their pedagogy. It’s a fascinating look at how we assign value to art and to humanity. —Genevieve Trainor