But isn’t there anything to learn from “covering” great writers? Can’t we be a bit like musicians every once in awhile and cover another’s work rather than steal it? I can’t write this without thinking of the Jorge Luis Borges piece:
Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote. I’ll let an excerpt speak for itself:
It is a revelation to compare Menard’s Don Quixote with Cervantes’. The latter, for example, wrote (part one, chapter nine):
. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor. Written in the seventeenth century, written by the “lay genius” Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes:
. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.
History, the mother of truth: the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. The final phrases—exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor —are brazenly pragmatic. The contrast in style is also vivid. The archaic style of Menard—quite foreign, after all—suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time.
In the spirit of covers, I offer you this post, which is a cover of one I wrote for the Mezrab Blog earlier in the week. It offers a number of covers by artists who have so re-imagined the originals that they are transformed and surprising. For starters, I offer you Hit ‘Em Up Style from the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Their version of the song made popular by Blu Cantrell is picked clean, sharper than the original, and infused with righteous anger:
When Leonard Cohen sings I’m Your Man, I think, “Someone to cuddle up with and depend on when I need him… What could be nicer?” When Nick Cave sings it though -- well, that’s something else. It’s erotic and explicit, sweaty and visceral. It makes my heart palpitate and my mouth water. I love you, Leonard Cohen, but it’s Nick Cave I want.
Like many people who were young in the 80s, I am a huge Clash fan. I saw them live in the Aragon ballroom in Chicago sometime or another before they stopped touring. There were no seats, and we danced with a kind of rage and energy that can only be experienced in a hall full of people keyed into the vibe, angry at the world, and filled with a drive to change reality. When I listen to them now, their songs sound surprisingly mild and melodic. They’re like lullabies. Nouvelle Vague has done some breathtaking covers of the Clash (Guns of Brixton comes to mind ) and Lily Allen’s version of Straight to Hell deserves a good listen, but in the spirit of the times, I want to highlight Rachid Taha’s version of Rock the Casbah. It just seems like great timing for a rebirth of this song, and Rachid Taha really brings it home.
My final recommendation for today is Ramblin’ Man from the Residents. It wasn’t until I listened to the Residents perform the Hank Williams classic that I understood just how dark the original really was. It can be found here: . Listen to both… isn’t it clear the ramblin man just killed some woman who may or may not have been his girlfriend and buried her in the woods? Tell me you don’t hear it too.
I leave all you readers with one final question: is it possible for writers to cover the works of other writers the way musicians do? I sure hope so.
I love the concept, Tori! What would this really look like, though? Obviously, with musicians, you can take the same words, the same story, and the same basic melodic structure -- but make it come out very differently, depending on the musician, the rhythm, the instrumentation, and such. But when the medium IS the words, the story, and the plot structure, what would a cover actually feel like?
ReplyDeleteMy friend Jonathan -- who blogs at Miniver Cheevy: http://miniver.blogspot.com/ -- and I had a discussion about this on Facebook, which I am reproducing here (since neither of us had strong privacy on this discussion):
ReplyDeleteJonathan: Actually, I think that in genre literature, at least, writing a cover version of a story is a longstanding tradition. Consider "Robin Hood". Or "Superman". Or "The Sword of Shanarra".
Tori: You are so right, Jonathan. Isn't that why we all love genre? (Yes: every single one of us) Because we have heard the story so often that we are at once comforted by its familiarity and excited about deviations and transformation?
Jonathan: Just so.
And I don't think that's a new development. How many versions of Robin Hood do we have? Or King Arthur? Or Faust? This goes all the way back. "Do you know the version where God creates the first woman by putting the first man to sleep and then taking one of his ribs ... ?"
A lot of people complain about half the movies you see coming out of Hollywood being sequels and remakes, but I think it's a grand tradition.
Tori: How many stories are there really? But I *do* actually wonder if there isn't something to be gained from flat out copying. Art students copy great painters... why don't writing students copy great writers? Why don't we take our pen in hand and just write what they wrote? Isn't there something to be learned from the experience?
Jonathan: Actually, I did that when I was a teenager. Samuel R. Delaney recommends, as a writing exercise, finding a passage you really like and copying out at least a few hundred words longhand. You discover things going through something at writing pace that you wouldn't notice at reading pace.
Jonathan: Further consideration: Gus van Sant's "Psycho".
Tori: He's right and oh right...
I had a think about what a concise definition of a "literary cover" would be: it's a writer's interpretation of the original author's key theme(s), not a simple retelling or "new adventure" of the same characters. A good (recent) example would be "Railsea" by China Mieville, which using a giant sci-fi mole worm in place of the white whale!
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