Are you bored by your book club’s pleasant conversation and mundane fare? Then get to Goodbye Blue Monday tonight at 8:30 for the monthly meeting of the Bushwick Book Club, which “employs the delirious talents of local songwriters who plumb the depths and scrape the ends of a chosen literary gem to create that rare and beautiful thing—a new song,” according to the group’s Web site.
Tonight’s performers will honor the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.” Past selections have included “James and the Giant Peach,” “The Bible,” “A Confederacy of Dunces,” and Miranda July’s “No One Belongs Here More Than You.”
Just imagine what these clever songsmiths will do with such subjects as the Galapagos, Blue-footed Boobies, and the HMS Beagle, surely one of the best-named ships in literary history.
If you’re lucky, you’ll hear something approaching the genius of Jeffrey Lewis’s ode to “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” from last February’s meeting devoted to the Raymond Carver story (you can rock out to it here). The song begins with the immortal lines: “Raymond Carver used to make a fit, if anyone ever called him a minimalist,” and only gets better from there.
At the least, you’ll get some inspiration to jolt your own club back to life. Who could refuse this invitation/warning:
(Thanks to reader Brian M. for the tip.)
