Fleetwood Mac – "Oh Well (Part 1)" (1969)

Don't ask me what I think of you

I might not give the answer

That you want me to

Julian Barnes is one of the most highly regarded British novelists alive today.  He’s taken home more literary prizes than you can shake a stick at – including the uberprestigious Man Booker Prize (now simply called the Booker Prize), which he won in 2011 for The Sense of the Ending. 

Julian Barnes

I first became acquainted with Barnes about 20 years ago, when I was in the midst of a Madame Bovary obsession – Gustave Flaubert’s masterpiece, which is arguably the greatest of all 19th-century novels.  (That’s saying something given all the great novelists who were writing in that century – including Dickens, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Henry James, Melville, Trollope, Tolstoy, Twain, and Zola, just to name a few.)

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I first read Madame Bovary in print, then listened to the book on CDs, then watched the 1991 Claude Chabrol movie adaptation (which starred Isabelle Huppert).  

I then moved on to Flaubert’s other works – including the novel Sentimental Education and Three Tales, which included a story titled “A Simple Heart.”

The main character in “A Simple Heart” was an unmarried, childless female servant who has a pet parrot.  Flaubert apparently had a stuffed parrot sitting on his desk when he was writing “A Simple Heart” – at least that’s what Julian Barnes says in his 1984 book, Flaubert’s Parrot, which is a novel about a retired English widower who becomes obsessed with Flaubert.  

Once I discovered Flaubert’s Parrot, of course I had to read it. 

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Flaubert’s Parrot is a very odd duck.  It’s mostly fiction, but also includes quite a bit of biographical information about Flaubert and a fair amount of literary criticism to boot.  (The penultimate chapter takes the form of a faux college essay exam on the material presented in the previous chapters of the book.)

Whether the stuffed parrot really existed or is a fragment of Barnes’s imagination is something I’m not sure about.

Barnes’s most recent novel, Elizabeth Finch, is just as odd as Flaubert’s Parrot. 

Its first third of the book is about the narrator’s obsession with the titular character, a spinster English professor who was a great influence on him.  The next part is a biographical essay about Julian the Apostate, the last non-Christian Roman emperor, who ruled for less than two years before dying in the Battle of Samarra in 363.

I haven’t read the final third of the book yet, but I hope Barnes explains what the hell all the Julian the Apostate stuff is about.

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Early in the book, a fellow student of the narrator’s named Linda asks him for advice.  Specifically, Linda asks him if she should ask the professor for advice concerning her love life.  The narrator finds Linda’s idea somewhat bizarre – Elizabeth Finch is a somewhat forbidding presence, and has never uttered a word about her own relationships or said anything else that would make a reasonable person conclude she would be open to dispensing advice about relationships to one of her students – but he doesn’t tell her so:

Linda came to seek my advice. . . . But I soon realized that Linda didn’t really want my input; or rather, she wanted my input as long as it coincided with what she’d already decided to do.  Some people are like that; perhaps most.  So, to make her feel better, I shifted my position and approved her intention.

I think most people are like that.  I’m probably like that – are you like that?

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I first featured “Oh Well (Part 1)” in 2020.  The lines from that song quoted above are the Madame Flaubert of rock lyrics – I can’t think of better ones.

Click here to listen to “Oh Well (Part 1).” 

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Matthew Sweet – "Girlfriend" (1991)

Honey, believe me

I'd sure love to call you my girlfriend

In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen spoke of "that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself."  

Jane would have agreed that Friday is the best day of the week.  Why?  Because the anticipation of a pleasurable weekend away from the office is nearly always more enjoyable than the weekend itself.

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How many of you remembered that today marks the four-year anniversary of 2 or 3 lines?  Can you believe it?  (I can't.)

Who'd a-thunk it back on November 1, 2009 (when 2 or 3 lines debuted with a post about The Last's "She Don't Know Why I'm Here") that four years later we'd be looking at 598 posts and (as of 12:01 am today) 408,135 page views.

As the old saying goes, "Tall oaks from little acorns grow."  Or in the case of 2 or 3 lines,  "Big piles of bullish*t from little blogposts grow."

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I write about popular music – at least that's what I write about when I'm not writing about myself.  (Which is rarely).

I think that if you had to reduce the essence of pop music to a single word, that word would be "girlfriend."  

Why do I say that?

I want a lifetime subscription

Although there have been many talented female pop musicians, the vast majority of what I consider to be the best pop songs of my lifetime were written and performed by men.  And what are men interested in above all else?  Women, of course.

And what is the best thing in the world for a woman to be?  

A wife?  HA!  (I'm not being anti-wife here, but remember what I said at the beginning of this post: anticipation is usually more pleasurable than realization.)  

A girlfriend?  Bingo! – as Strother Martin's character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid said when he successfully spit tobacco juice without fouling his beard in the process.

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A girlfriend is the greatest thing a guy can have.  When you have a girlfriend, either you are young or you feel young – which is almost as good.

(Not really – who am I kidding?  But humor me, please.)

Please note – I said "girlfriend," not "overly attached girlfriend."  An "overly attached girlfriend" – see examples below – is mos' definitely not the greatest thing a guy can have.

Avoid the overly attached girlfriend!

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A girlfriend is all about the future.  A girlfriend has a high upside and very little downside.  A girlfriend is anticipated happiness – the "sanguine expectation of happiness," in jane Austen's words.  

She's like a delicious meal after the first couple of bites – you know it's delicious, and you have so much of the meal left to enjoy that you're not worrying about how depressing it will be when you take that last bite!  

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Please note: I said "girlfriend" – I did not say "girl friend."  A "girl friend" is a very different thing than a "girlfriend."  

Although, of course, a "girl friend" may always turn into a "girlfriend" at some point in the future.  And we were speaking earlier about the anticipation of future pleasure – correct?

Yes, we are.  But in most cases, a "girl friend" turning into a "girlfriend" is a fantasy that will never be realized.  

Matthew Sweet didn't title this song (or the 1991 album of the same name that it appeared on) "Girl Friend," after all – he titled it "Girlfriend."  That's why guys write catchy little pop songs, after all – so they can get girlfriends.  (Surely you don't think my friends and I started the Rogues when we were in 8th grade out of our love for music?)

Matthew Sweet has a "girl friend" who would make an absolutely spectacular "girlfriend": Susanna Hoffs.    

Susanna Hoffs was a member of the great all-girl group from the 1980s, the Bangles.  She is cute with a capital "C" – and let's throw in capital "U," "T," and "E" as well.

And while we're at it, we might as well italicize those letters and put them in bold font and add "super" and some exclamation points:  Susanna Hoffs is SUPER CUTE!!! (And she's a ROCK STAR, for cryin' out loud!  How cool is THAT?)

Click here to see her singing "Hazy Shade of Winter" in a little black dress at SXSW in 2011.

OMG, she is cute, CUTER, CUTEST!  Am I right, or am I right?  

Unfortunately for Matthew, Susanna is married – and married to the guy who directed the Austin Powers movies as well as Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, 50 First Dates, and Borat.  

I know, those are all pretty lame movies – but they made a boatload of money, and that goes a long way with some people.  (As my grandmother used to say, "It's just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor girl.")

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Hoffs and Sweet teamed up to record the three Under the Covers albums, which feature covers of great songs from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, respectively.  (I am always on the lookout for opportunities to use "respectively" in this fashion.)  

Sweet is a very talented musician, and Hoffs probably couldn't have found a better collaborator.  But he's got about as much shot as making her his girlfriend as I do.

Click here to listen to "Girlfriend."  Happy birthday to 2 or 3 lines!

Click here if you'd like to buy "Girlfriend" from Amazon.