John Fahey - How Bluegrass Destroyed My Life
(Drag City)
A book, what's this, but a book by John Fahey? Could all of my dreams come true? The irreverent musings of
this legendary guitarist, finally collected under one edition. If you've already seen "The Nature of Reality," an
essay found on www.johnfahey.com, you'll have some idea what to expect.
This slightly overpriced paperback published by Drag City features several short stories written by John
Fahey on topics ranging from love to music, all in his bizarre style. Fahey avoids paragraphs, instead
presenting sentence after sentence, often digressing into strange rants that could only come from his mind.
"April in the Orange" is my favorite story, a romantic version of Fahey's first love (although he told me it was
entirely fictional). Fahey's writing is as descriptively non-descriptive as Hemingway, but cut with his biting
saracasm and idiosyncratic worldview.
Some parts of Bluegrass are hilarious, such as the tale of Fahey punching out director Michaelangelo Antonioni
for insulting America during work on Zabriskie Point (which Fahey was initially asked to work on). Other
parts are laced with Fahey's weird spiritualistic outpourings, which are sometimes confusing. The section on
Skip James, if it's true, provides an amazing bit of musical history. Much of the book has touches of the
"magical reality" style found in writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison. When Fahey
describes an encounter with a supernatural teenage girl, he provides such authority that we cannot question
that the events happened exactly as he tells it.
Jim O'Rourke's liner notes are insignificant except for describing how lackadaisical Fahey approaches writing.
I hope Fahey writes more--he is a treasure to this world.
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