Field Recordings from the Inside

December 12, 2016
Bonomo’s latest book incorporates autobiographical themes of his previous collection, This Must Be Where My Obsession with Infinity Begins, and an obsessive desire to understand how artists do what they do . Bonomo is fascinated with the ways in which songs are “less a tune than a field recording from inside your body, your heart chambers’ vérité” as he looks at the ways music influenced and underscored events throughout his life. The best essays here extend that gaze beyond his own life and into those of other artists and their audiences; especially good is “Bafflement, Clarity, and Malice,” a reverie on the power of lyrics that express “their profound simplicity, their old newness.” Another standout in this great collection is Bonomo’s warm look at the late novelist Larry Brown and Brown’s love of music, as well as is his 584-page screenplay about Hank Williams.

February 1, 2017
An unconventional investigation into the ways in which music influences our lives.Primarily focusing on the formative years of his adolescent musical education, roughly the late 1960s through the 1980s, music journalist and biographer Bonomo (Creative Nonfiction/Northern Illinois Univ.; This Must Be Where My Obsession with Infinity Began, 2013, etc.) presents a mishmash of personal stories, musical history, and criticism, which more often than not reads like stream-of-consciousness musings rather than argumentative or observational reflections. The tone and style of the essays sometimes veer into near free association, in which paragraphs transition based on a whim. One particular chapter, for instance, bounces among the song-identifying app Shazam, the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song, and Snapchat, all tied together by a tenuous statement on the ephemeral natures of music and technology. In a separate essay, this penchant for odd juxtapositions also connects the 1963 suicide of Sylvia Plath in London with the Beatles recording at Abbey Road. Bonomo also infuses his chapters with vague, out-of-context quotations from such figures as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and Orson Welles, further muddying his point of view. For all their unorthodox and diaristic styles, Bonomo's essays do offer moments of insight. In one, the author examines the peculiar history of music as it relates to the "tensions between Saturday night's excesses and Sunday morning's sober inventories," from Delta blues to Green Day. Moreover, Bonomo's passion for his subject matter is undeniable, and the verve with which he writes about music is endearing. One only wishes Bonomo had focused more on clarifying and highlighting these moments over extraneous and misleading digressions. There are plenty of cultural touchstones to pique the interest of readers of a certain age, but the author provides scarcely enough groundwork to keep general readers interested. A largely unfocused and insular journey through Bonomo's experiences with pop music.

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January 1, 2017
It is a well-known fact that scent has the strongest link to memory, but in Bonomo's (Jerry Lee Lewis, 2009) new essay collection, music might just usurp that predominant link. The writings he collects for this mix tape of memories are deep cuts. Rather than extolling the virtues of pop-music icons like some music critics, Bonomo shares his half-remembered personal history in connection with the music in his life. Such observances include top 40 radio songs from the band 10cc, bringing him back to his 10-year-old self; a 600-mile journey with his wife to look over a Mississippi writer's Hollywood-funded Hank Williams biopic screenplay; and his poetically brief Chicago encounters with a criminally underrated Memphis career musician. Bonomo also compares essayists more than a century apart. That is the appeal of this genre-spanning collection, along with the mix tapes: no special musical expertise is necessary for appreciating Bonomo's point of view or the richly described nostalgia. Just drop the needle, hit play, scroll, or turn the page and enjoy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)