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Post by wireman on Apr 21, 2021 11:59:05 GMT
Today we will discuss Pork Pie Hat by Peter Straub from the collection Interior Darkness.
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Post by wireman on Apr 21, 2021 17:03:59 GMT
I liked this one. It is not as dark and disturbing as some of the other stories in the book. It's a compelling story that's hard to put down. It's kind of a combination mystery and horror story and nothing is quite what it seems.
I think this passage about Hat sums up the story pretty well:
After I had heard the long, unresolved tale of his Halloween night, everything Hat said seemed to have two separate meanings, the daylight meaning created by sequences of ordinary English words, and another, nighttime meaning, far less determined and knowable.
Straub, Peter. Interior Darkness (p. 254). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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Post by spideyman on Apr 21, 2021 19:22:17 GMT
This was a good read. Captivating. Much better than some of the ones we have read so farwith this book. Child horror and adult fears. Found it to be page turner.
Excellent quote, wireman.
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Post by edwardjohn on Apr 21, 2021 19:53:05 GMT
I'm not sure what to think of this story. I liked the Hat plot from when he was a kid and the mystery there, how unreliable his version of the story was and all of that, and then the narrator finding out what really happened. But I'm still baffled by the whole Jazz thing at the start with the narrator seeking out Hat and being a massive fan of his music. It seemed like the whole story should have been about that plot from when Hat was a kid. I don't know, was Straub really into Jazz and wanted to randomly put that in the story? I'm not sure. It just seems weird, the whole first part of the narrator finding Hat seemed weird to me.
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Post by wireman on Apr 21, 2021 20:41:03 GMT
I'm not sure what to think of this story. I liked the Hat plot from when he was a kid and the mystery there, how unreliable his version of the story was and all of that, and then the narrator finding out what really happened. But I'm still baffled by the whole Jazz thing at the start with the narrator seeking out Hat and being a massive fan of his music. It seemed like the whole story should have been about that plot from when Hat was a kid. I don't know, was Straub really into Jazz and wanted to randomly put that in the story? I'm not sure. It just seems weird, the whole first part of the narrator finding Hat seemed weird to me. |
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Post by edwardjohn on Apr 21, 2021 21:06:26 GMT
I'm not sure what to think of this story. I liked the Hat plot from when he was a kid and the mystery there, how unreliable his version of the story was and all of that, and then the narrator finding out what really happened. But I'm still baffled by the whole Jazz thing at the start with the narrator seeking out Hat and being a massive fan of his music. It seemed like the whole story should have been about that plot from when Hat was a kid. I don't know, was Straub really into Jazz and wanted to randomly put that in the story? I'm not sure. It just seems weird, the whole first part of the narrator finding Hat seemed weird to me. 
It seemed like Straub had multiple short story ideas and decided to mesh them. |
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Post by spideyman on Apr 21, 2021 21:45:33 GMT
Here is part of an interview with Straub concerning Pork Pie Hat ( the full link is below)
Pork Pie Hat is the story of a story, which is also true of The Hellfire Club. A jazz fan asks his hero for an interview, but gets much more than he bargained for. Said hero, the eponymous saxophone player (who is nobody's idea of a hero if we consider him as a person) is knocking at death's door, a prey to drink, depression and malnutrition. I asked Peter Straub how the novella had come about. "The inspiration for Pork Pie Hat came from a long moment in a videotape of 'The Sound of Jazz,' a live television broadcast in 1957 or 1958 that assembled a lot of great jazz musicians in a studio and let them play whatever they felt like for the space of an entire hour. Just before its conclusion, Billie Holiday sat perched on a stool to sing a blues she had written called "Fine and Mellow" at the centre of a circle made up of heroic figures like Ben Webster, Vic Dickenson, Jo Jones, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Rex Stewart, and - above all - the tenor saxophonist Lester Young, then only months from the end of his life and in terrible shape. Billie sang a chorus, two musicians played a chorus apiece, Billie sang another chorus, and so on...
"Lester Young wandered into view at the beginning of the second go-round. Someone had to give him a push in the back to get him on his feet and moving toward the microphone. You can see him lick his reed and settle the horn in his mouth. What he plays is one uncomplicated chorus of the blues that moves from phrase to phrase with a kind of otherworldly majesty. Sorrow, heartbreak, and what I can only call wisdom take place through the mechanism of following one note, usually a whole note, with another one, slowly. There he is, this stupendous musician who had once transformed everything about him by the grace of his genius, this present shambles, this human wreckage, hardly able to play at all, delivering a statement that becomes more and more perfect, more and more profound as it advances from step to step. I cried every time I watched it, and I watched it over and over. I played it for my friends and made them watch it. Eventually, I wondered: what could lead a person to a place like that, what brought him there? That was the origin of Pork Pie Hat."
www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intstraub.htm
wireman and@edwardjohn
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Post by wireman on Apr 21, 2021 21:53:41 GMT
Here is part of an interview with Straub concerning Pork Pie Hat ( the full link is below)
Pork Pie Hat is the story of a story, which is also true of The Hellfire Club. A jazz fan asks his hero for an interview, but gets much more than he bargained for. Said hero, the eponymous saxophone player (who is nobody's idea of a hero if we consider him as a person) is knocking at death's door, a prey to drink, depression and malnutrition. I asked Peter Straub how the novella had come about. "The inspiration for Pork Pie Hat came from a long moment in a videotape of 'The Sound of Jazz,' a live television broadcast in 1957 or 1958 that assembled a lot of great jazz musicians in a studio and let them play whatever they felt like for the space of an entire hour. Just before its conclusion, Billie Holiday sat perched on a stool to sing a blues she had written called "Fine and Mellow" at the centre of a circle made up of heroic figures like Ben Webster, Vic Dickenson, Jo Jones, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Rex Stewart, and - above all - the tenor saxophonist Lester Young, then only months from the end of his life and in terrible shape. Billie sang a chorus, two musicians played a chorus apiece, Billie sang another chorus, and so on...
"Lester Young wandered into view at the beginning of the second go-round. Someone had to give him a push in the back to get him on his feet and moving toward the microphone. You can see him lick his reed and settle the horn in his mouth. What he plays is one uncomplicated chorus of the blues that moves from phrase to phrase with a kind of otherworldly majesty. Sorrow, heartbreak, and what I can only call wisdom take place through the mechanism of following one note, usually a whole note, with another one, slowly. There he is, this stupendous musician who had once transformed everything about him by the grace of his genius, this present shambles, this human wreckage, hardly able to play at all, delivering a statement that becomes more and more perfect, more and more profound as it advances from step to step. I cried every time I watched it, and I watched it over and over. I played it for my friends and made them watch it. Eventually, I wondered: what could lead a person to a place like that, what brought him there? That was the origin of Pork Pie Hat."
www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intstraub.htm
wireman and@edwardjohn
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Post by edwardjohn on Apr 21, 2021 23:31:53 GMT
Here is part of an interview with Straub concerning Pork Pie Hat ( the full link is below)
Pork Pie Hat is the story of a story, which is also true of The Hellfire Club. A jazz fan asks his hero for an interview, but gets much more than he bargained for. Said hero, the eponymous saxophone player (who is nobody's idea of a hero if we consider him as a person) is knocking at death's door, a prey to drink, depression and malnutrition. I asked Peter Straub how the novella had come about. "The inspiration for Pork Pie Hat came from a long moment in a videotape of 'The Sound of Jazz,' a live television broadcast in 1957 or 1958 that assembled a lot of great jazz musicians in a studio and let them play whatever they felt like for the space of an entire hour. Just before its conclusion, Billie Holiday sat perched on a stool to sing a blues she had written called "Fine and Mellow" at the centre of a circle made up of heroic figures like Ben Webster, Vic Dickenson, Jo Jones, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Rex Stewart, and - above all - the tenor saxophonist Lester Young, then only months from the end of his life and in terrible shape. Billie sang a chorus, two musicians played a chorus apiece, Billie sang another chorus, and so on...
"Lester Young wandered into view at the beginning of the second go-round. Someone had to give him a push in the back to get him on his feet and moving toward the microphone. You can see him lick his reed and settle the horn in his mouth. What he plays is one uncomplicated chorus of the blues that moves from phrase to phrase with a kind of otherworldly majesty. Sorrow, heartbreak, and what I can only call wisdom take place through the mechanism of following one note, usually a whole note, with another one, slowly. There he is, this stupendous musician who had once transformed everything about him by the grace of his genius, this present shambles, this human wreckage, hardly able to play at all, delivering a statement that becomes more and more perfect, more and more profound as it advances from step to step. I cried every time I watched it, and I watched it over and over. I played it for my friends and made them watch it. Eventually, I wondered: what could lead a person to a place like that, what brought him there? That was the origin of Pork Pie Hat."
www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intstraub.htm
wireman and@edwardjohn
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Post by spideyman on Apr 23, 2021 11:49:15 GMT
Any suggestions for the next reading group discussion?
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Post by edwardjohn on Apr 23, 2021 22:06:17 GMT
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Post by wireman on Apr 23, 2021 22:33:42 GMT
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Post by edwardjohn on Apr 23, 2021 22:35:49 GMT
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Post by spideyman on Apr 23, 2021 22:45:27 GMT
Count me in- sounds interesting.
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Post by wolf on Apr 24, 2021 3:12:56 GMT
....looking forward to more of y'alls discussions. 🙂
“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars.”
- Robert E. Howard
Long days and pleasant nights.
...by Crom! 😊😉
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Post by cat on May 29, 2021 22:31:40 GMT
I really liked this story. By far, the best in this collection. (So far anyway.)
I played the alto saxophone. 3 of my 4 kids have also played one, but my daughter is the only one still playing. So I really loved that Hat was a sax player. I am not a big jazz fan, I like the blues and ragtime but straight up jazz sounds like noise to me...but, as a sax player, I completely respect and understand the pure musicianship that comes with playing jazz. It is a different world.
I highlighted a few things...
Pg 207 kindle version...In Hat's later years, his music thickened, and sorrow spoke through the phrases. In his last years, what he played often sounded like heartbreak itself.
I liked this as a sax player. The saxophone has a beautiful, mournful tone and is overlooked a lot. But at the same time, depending on the piece, can be jaunty and fun.
Pg 209 kindle...Hat tilted his horn to one side, examined the mouthpiece, and slid it a tiny distance down the cork. He liked the reed,...
Again, it stuck out to me as a sax player. The mouthpiece on the cork is how you tune it. Sharp, you move it out. Flat, you push it on a little more. And licking the reed, well...I could taste it and feel it when I read that line.
Both of those really only stuck out to me because of being a sax player. I get the discussion above about the beginning part feeling out of place, and I thought this was going to be a sold my soul to the devil for my talent kind of story, because of how it started. But, the story within the story came out during the interview for the article, so it didn't feel weird to me, just one of those things that happen when people talk. One subject leads to another.
Pg 220 kindle...Now that I am of the age he was then, I see that most of what is called information is interpretation, and interpretation is always partial.
How true that statement is.
I liked the story within the story very much too, and I had an inkling the man in the shack was Hat's father before the guy telling the story (did we ever know his name? 😄) went looking for more info at the end. It was creepy and was hard to put down.
I am pretty sure I have a Cemetery Dance edition of this story. This was my first time reading it though.
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