Day: May 20, 2008

The next book I picked up off of Mike’s bookshelf was a lot more interesting and dear to my heart than The Catcher in the Rye.  Mike had recommend this book as he knew I shared as much passion for music and guitars as he did.

Clapton’s Guitar is a book by Allen St-John which follows the creation of a guitar by Wayne Henderson, who is an American luthier and his guitars are highly sought after.

It follows Allen’s journey into Wayne’s workshop out in Rugby, Virginia (population 7) where Wayne constructs his objects of beauty.  Wayne will build you a guitar, but you’ll have to remind him to do so and you may be holding your breath for a long time while waiting to play it.  Some guitars have taken ten years to build because he has no discernible order to his schedule.  He just builds what he feels like.  If he feels like building your guitar today, he’ll do it.  If not, you may have to keep reminding him or it can take you a decade to finally get one.

This book was an amazing insight into the luthier buisiness of building guitars, as well as a history lesson on guitars in general, but specifically focussing on the Martin guitar line and how they are highly sought after.  I never really knew anything about Martin guitars before reading this book, but I now know that Martin guitars (especially pre-war models) are highly sought after and can fetch numbers like $30,000.  For a guitar!!!  I never knew!  I guess it is now my dream to play a Martin guitar to see what’s the big deal.

The story goes that Eric Clapton played a Wayne Henderson guitar and wanted one.  He puts in an order but like everyone else, has to wait awhile.  Allen St-John finds out about this and wants to meet Wayne Henderson (being an avid guitar collector/player himself) and so forms a friendship with Wayne and he is writing a book about Clapton’s guitar and eventually Wayne gets around to building the guitar for Mr. Clapton.

The story follows the actual process of building the guitar, intermixed with the happenings of their lives such as travelling to music festivals, history lessons of guitar factories, luthiers, repairmen and the quest for old pre-war Martin guitars.  It also talks about folk guitar playing in general and follows some up and comers from the music festivals.

Being a guitar player myself, I really enjoyed this novel.  I thought it was superb.  I had never thought about a guitar in the way that these people do.  I had respect for my instrument but had never really known what had gone into it.  I now know what sort of wood makes a better sounding guitar.  I now know that Brazillian rosewood is a lot harder to come by than any other rosewood, hence the reason why the Wayne Henderson guitars are highly sought after; because they sound amazing and are not made in a factory…they are made one at a time with care.

For a guitar player, this book is a must.  For a non-guitar player, I think you would still enjoy this book as it follows a journey of creation but it was also filled with fun stories of Wayne Henderson and his friends.

Heck, I even want to convince Dad to try and build a guitar when he retires.  It would be a neat hobby.  Even I want to try it now.

I needed a book to read a few weeks ago so I decided to start scouring Mike’s bookshelf as he had recommended a few novels over the years that I had never ended up reading. The first one to catch my eye was one that he had not recommended but I knew I had wanted to read it for some time: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

I didn’t know what to expect from the novel. I knew it was a grand piece of North American literature. I knew that a lot of people had read it in high school. I really had no idea what the novel was about.

The story follows Holden Caulfield, a student at a prep school who has flunked out and is heading back to his parents place in New York City. Turns out that he has flunked out of a few prep schools and it doesn’t seem that he is too interested in much in life.

The narrative is very cynical and it reads from the first person perspective of Holden. He is always annoyed with everyone and how fake they are. I swear every second word is ‘god damn’ which I thought must have had to be a big deal back in 1951 when it was published. I wanted to ask Nanny about that actually.

All in all, I personally found the novel to be quite boring. For the longest time while reading it, I was thinking “Alright, where’s the hook? What’s going to happen? All there is is Holden complaining about everything and him getting closer and closer to his parents place back home.” I really had to churn through the novel. At one point I had mentioned to Amelia that I was reading it and finding it very lacklustre and she mentioned that it was her husbands’ favourite book and she enjoyed it as well so I thought that maybe there was a glorious ending to it and I sped through to the end.

I was left disappointed as there was no amazing twist (thank you makers of the television show Lost for making me expect a grand twist at the end of every story I ever read again) and overall, I couldn’t really understand why this was considered a grand piece of literature.

After speaking with Mike, Krista and others, I have gathered that for the time, the novel was a breakthrough in storytelling in this manner. There was not a lot of first person narratives, let alone one with some foul language and a dismal outlook on life. Plus, it went through some pretty interesting topics for its time…drinking alcohol, seeing prostitutes…it must have been a big deal at the time back in 1951.

I compare this novel to the same feeling kids nowadays must get when we show them the old cartoons we grew up with and they laugh and say “The special effects were so cheesy! How could you like this?!”. It’s all a matter of perspective and I figure I would have enjoyed this more if I had read it in a more appropriate time period. As a story, it just wasn’t that interesting to me and did not shock me in any way.