Neil Young waged heavy bullshit in a memoir that spent all of a paragraph describing hanging out with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson and the Manson family in favor of slinging hundreds of pages of PR copy about the new sound system Mr. Young invented. The masochist in me kind of liked this book, the same way I like the most pointless of Mr. Young’s guitar solos. Passages such as this are the prose equivalent:

A funny thing happened at Woodstock. I didn’t want cameras onstage distracting me while we were playing. I hated the showboating atmosphere that surrounded the filming and thought it distracted from our music. The music was between us and the audience, and anything that got in the way was taboo in my opinion...On the Woodstock record, Atlantic Records used a song of mine recorded months later at the Fillmore East in New York called “Sea of Madness.” That was kind of misleading.

Okay, grandpa. Thanks for lunch, but I really gotta get going now.

Pete Townshend turns out to be a better writer than ol’ shakey—he devotes quite of lot time in his book, Who I Am, to his career as an acquisitions editor at Faber & Faber, a job he took a few years after the death of Who drummer Keith Moon. It’s interesting, but not as interesting as, you know, getting into a fistfight onstage with Keith Moon or throwing televisions out of hotel windows, details that get shortchanged.

Of all the music memoirs this year, my favorite is the one by Rod Stewart, the hilariously-named Rod. Mr. Stewart positions himself as a stately, Evelyn Waugh-esque narrator. (The chapters all have headings like “In which our hero throws in his lot with the damaged remnants of the Small Faces and is reluctantly made alert to the perils of trying to run two careers at once. With sundry meditations on graffiti, Ronnie Wood’s hooter, and the wearing of velvet in hot rooms.”)

The worst book of the year—and possibly of the past several—is Say Nice Things About Detroit by Scott Lasser, an insulting and entirely misguided fictional account of my dear, troubled hometown that manages to make one of the most complicated and evocative places in the world about as interesting as a conference call.

The runner-up was Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie’s third-person memoir of the fatwa issued on him by Ayatollah Khomeini. I took less issue with the author—who lived under the titular pseudonym Joseph Anton during those threatening years—casually placing himself in a lineage with Conrad and Chekhov, as well as comparing his novel to Ulysses and Lolita, than I did with his numerous attacks, almost in the same breath, on the “majestic narcissism” of Padma Lakshmi, his fourth wife, whom he might as well just refer to as “dumb slut.” Mr. Rushdie uses the third person as if it protects him from the offhanded misogyny of his assaults, not to mention his own preposterous self-aggrandizing. There is also prose in the book that makes Top Chef look like Joyce:

His biggest problem, he thought in his most bitter moments, was that he wasn’t dead. If he were dead nobody in England would have to fuss about the cost of his security and whether or not he merited such special treatment for so long. He wouldn’t have to fight for the right to get on a plane … He wouldn’t have to talk to any more politicians (big advantage). His exile from India wouldn’t hurt. And the stress level would definitely be lower.

Yes, because the worst thing about having an international hit put on you is that it’s just so stressful.

A superior memoir is A Sense of Direction by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, which includes this description of Berlin: “Cigarettes marked off the time. For the few minutes one lasted, you knew exactly what you were doing: you were smoking that cigarette. When it was done, you would figure out what to do next, or you would just light another.”

Toni Morrison’s uneven novella Home, about an alcoholic veteran of the Korean War trying to rescue his sister from an evil eugenicist, felt both overwritten and unfinished; Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan’s humorless, entirely unsexy novel about Cold War-era British espionage, made Moonraker look smart; and Junot Díaz’s This Is How You Lose Her was like a teaser for better things to come.

Of the year’s failures, Zadie Smith’s novel NW was at least a very interesting one. Ms. Smith can make the description of a dumpy office feel dire: “Here offices are boxy cramped Victorian damp. Five people share them, the carpet is threadbare, the hole-punch will never be found.” But the novel is less a narrative than an unwelcoming environment to move around in at random. She bogs down her writing with a disruptive and schizophrenic style.

Speaking of interruptions, Laurent Binet’s HHhH was translated into English this year, and is nominally about Reinhard Heydrich—Hitler’s “Butcher of Prague”—but is much more about the difficulty of trying to write a novel about Reinhard Heydrich, including various William Gass-like digressions from the author himself.

A (slightly) less-tortured historical novel was Hilary Mantel’s very entertaining Bring Up the Bodies, about Thomas Cromwell.

Katherine Boo’s amazing reconstruction of life in an Annawadi slum beat out another of Robert Caro’s minute-to-minute biographies of LBJ for the nonfiction National Book Award. Louise Erdrich deservedly won the NBA for fiction with The Round House, her novel about a violent rape on an Ojibwe reservation, though the award felt like it was retroactively awarding a mostly consistent 25-year career. Let’s not even talk about how there was no Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Metafictional winks—for example, an author naming her protagonist after herself and her supporting cast after her friends—have always seemed dubious to me, so I picked up Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? with apprehension. The book stars Sheila Heti and seemingly includes transcripts of Ms. Heti’s conversations with her real-life friends, though that might be a fictional ruse. Ms. Heti is thoughtful in her exploration of the thin line between fiction and reality, especially in her examination of the ways in which the two bleed together.

Chris Kraus, an antecedent to Ms. Heti, also wrote a small masterpiece this year with a novel about the Los Angeles art world, Summer of Hate.

I can’t think of a better work of nonfiction in 2012 than Mark Binelli’s Detroit City is the Place to Be, an antidote to Scott Lasser’s atrocity. Nothing has come as close to realistically documenting the wackiness of contemporary Detroit. At one point, Mr. Binelli sneaks onto the set of the remake of the communists-are-coming smut movie Red Dawn, which was filmed at the author’s old high school. The city had been plastered with fictional propaganda posters that say things like YOU DESERVE TO BE HERE. Mr. Binelli overhears a crew member talking about how much he loved filming in Detroit: “We were setting off major explosions in the middle of downtown! Seriously, man, there’s nowhere else in the country they’d let you do something like this.”

It was a good year for poetry. Maureen N. McLane (full disclosure: a grad school professor of mine) wrote a brilliant poem-memoir that attempted to answer the question, “Why poetry?” (The answers range from “Poetry is connate with the origin of man” to “I have wasted my life.”) Having Louise Glück’s collected poems in a single volume is a gift. Michael Robbins published the most assured debut I’ve read in a long time. And any year John Ashbery publishes a book is A-okay with me, especially one with the lines, “No one expects life to be a single adventure,/yet conversely, one is surprised when it turns out disappointing.” Also, Frederick Seidel’s Nice Weather included some of the bleakest imagery of the year:

This is what it’s like at the end
    of the day.

But soon the day will go away.

Sunlight preoccupies the cross
    street.

It and night soon will meet.

Meanwhile, there is Central
    Park.

Now the park is getting dark.

Oh, and speaking of bleak, Fifty Shades of Grey saved publishing.

mmiler@observer.com

Neil Young. (Photo by Pegi Young)

The rock-star memoir is one of those dicey genres whose success depends on exceeding the lowest possible expectations. Patti Smith’s Just Kids (2010) was highly acclaimed despite her apparent belief that serious writing is principally a matter of avoiding contractions. Keith Richards’s Life (2010) was New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon’s choice for book of the year despite being called Life. Jay-Z’s remarkable Decoded was co-written with Dream Hampton, so it doesn’t count. The gold standard is Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, Volume One (2004), a work of freaky genius that nevertheless contains several phrases on the order of “Sigmund Freud, the king of the subconscious.”

Expectations duly lowered, I was ready to give Neil Young’s new memoir a chance even though it is a) titled Waging Heavy Peace (Blue Rider Press, 512 pp., $30) and b) written by Neil Young, who has always struggled with lyrics—you know, the writing words part. “That perfect feeling when time just slips / Away between us on our foggy trip,” anyone?

Now, Neil Young is a colossus. He’s reshaped rock ’n’ roll. That maelstrom of guitar fuzz you hear in Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Built to Spill, Nirvana, or in metal bands like Horseback and Royal Thunder—Neil Young made that possible. After the Gold Rush, On the Beach, Tonight’s the Night, Decade, Rust Never Sleeps—these are sacred documents.

But as sure as this old world keeps spinning round, the man cannot write a book.

Waging Heavy Peace (it helps if you mentally substitute a better title—which is to say, any other title—whenever you read those words) is as messy as the druggiest Crazy Horse solo. Unlike a Crazy Horse record, though, there’s no discernible structure, just a free-associating ramble through the haze of Mr. Young’s green mind. That could be fun enough, and the old man sure has some tales to tell. But the prose. Reader, the prose.

The pull quote on the dust jacket had me worried before I’d even turned to the first page:

I think I will have to use my time wisely and keep my thoughts straight if I am to succeed and deliver the cargo I so carefully have carried thus far to the outer reaches. Not that it’s my only job or task. I have others, too. Sacred things that I need to protect from pain and hardship, like careless remarks on an open mind.

Ah, the weird Victorian transmissions of the amateur writer. Who says “I so carefully have carried thus far”? Why both “job” and “task”? What does the last clause modify? What could it mean for a “careless remark” to be “on” an “open mind”?

Indeed, there is not a hint of inspiration on any page of Waging Heavy Peace, nothing to indicate that Mr. Young has any idea that sentences can do more than impart basic information: “There is a lot of misinformation about ethanol.” “The production of the concert got some awards as well and was seen as bold at the least. That made [the producer David] Briggs and me feel pretty good. The movie we made of the concert is one of my favorites.” “I got a few sexually transmitted diseases and started to become aware that there was a responsibility connected to the decisions I was making.” “We had some really great times, David and I! That was only one of them! I am laughing my ass off right now just thinking of the fun we had! How lighthearted.”

No one expects belles-lettres from rock stars, but it’s depressing to learn that one of your heroes writes like a composition student aiming for the earnest tone of a public service announcement. Without a wink of irony, Mr. Young will exclaim “That’s life!” or end a chapter with “The sky was the limit.” Compare Mr. Dylan in Chronicles:

Once when I was lying on the beach in Coney Island, I saw a portable radio in the sand ... a beautiful General Electric, self-charging—built like a battleship—and it was broken ... I had seen a lot of other things broken, too—bowls, brass lamps, vessels and jars and jugs, buildings, buses, sidewalks, trees, landscapes—all these things, when they’re broken, make you feel ill at ease.

This is mysterious, haunting in a way that’s reminiscent of Mr. Dylan’s best songs, even though he’s describing one of his worst (“Everything Is Broken”). It’s not a coincidence that Mr. Dylan spends pages hyperventilating over Rimbaud and Byron and Faulkner and Coleridge, while the only indication in Waging Heavy Peace that Neil Young has ever read a single book comes when he mentions buying a used Clive Cussler novel.

Soft target, you say? Well, the guy did write a book, and he is asking you to throw 30 of your clams at it. But all right, what about the content? Turns out it’s the extension of form. Mr. Young is never more frustrating than when he finally threatens to get to the good stuff. “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” serves as the epigraph to a chapter that begins by noting that line’s relationship to both John Lennon and Kurt Cobain. But Mr. Young has little to say about Lennon or Cobain. The chapter devolves into a mash note to Jimmy Fallon.

Playing guitar with Charlie Manson merits a couple of perfunctory paragraphs. After Katrina, Neil gets a call from his “old friend Bruce.” It’s Bruce Springsteen! On the phone with Neil Young! What did they talk about! Who knows! “There is no need to go into what two old friends had to say to each other at this point.” Right. Unless you’re trying to write an interesting book.

Instead, if you read Waging Heavy Peace, you will learn more than you ever wanted to know about model trains and old cars, Mr. Young’s obsessive hobbies. You will thrill to PowerPointillist descriptions of his business meetings. You will be told that all good things must pass, but no one knows why. You will be made to feel guilty about listening to MP3s. You will wonder just how many sentences in a single memoir can begin “Anyway ...” You will marvel at the wonders of the Lincvolt. (I think this is a kind of electric car, but it is so boring to read about that I learned to start skimming whenever the word “Lincvolt” loomed in my peripheral vision.)

And you will find it affecting, to listen in as this aging artist mourns his lost friends, as he worries that the cloud on his MRI presages the dementia that felled his father, as he likens his 40 years of drug and alcohol use to a big sleep. The simplicity of the prose befits these moments: in a chapter devoted to heroin casualties, we learn that when producer Jack Nitzsche overdosed, “I was on the road. I didn’t know what else to do, so I just sent flowers.”

The chapter should have ended there. But Neil Young cannot resist what Greil Marcus once called the “traditional Neil Young sappiness,” so we get some guff about life in full bloom and having faith when darkness falls. It’s easier to forgive the sap when a galaxy-spawning guitar solo is around the bend. If you really want to wage some heavy peace, do yourself a favor and put on “Cowgirl in the Sand” or “Hey Hey, My My.” There’s little ragged glory to be had from this open mind’s careless remarks.

editorial@observer.com

The performance was part of a screening party for an animated short called "Cadaver" by director Jonah Ansell. As The Standard's blog tells it:

One would think the stars of the film, Hollywood legends Christopher Lloyd and Kathy Bates would make enough of a splash, but let’s face it, everyone was there to witness Tavi Gevinson add singing and acting to her already precocious fashion world success.

Seeing as how The Observer is herein neither a sufficient critic of Neil Young standards or sixteen year-olds, we'll simply stick to noting anything other than the fact that, according to The Standard's blog, Neil Young approved the cover (also featured in the film) himself. As a general rule, most people do not get the people whose songs they cover approving of said covers when they're 16. Let alone Neil Young's.

And also, that it's kind of great.

[It's not that nobody in New York City's media set—adored or otherwise—has any remotely interesting talents other than those with which they use to do their jobs (though, besides the occasional softball game, this is probably kind of arguable); it's that none of them are likely to ever put them on display (with exception to the occasional comedy night) for reasons not worth getting into here but that are generally along the lines of the same reasons everybody restrains themselves from doing that which may expose them to ridicule or failure, except they are all grown-ups with far less to lose in that department than they probably imagine. For that alone, this is noteworthy.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

On Sunday, up-and-coming Chicago director Jonah Ansell (best known, to date, for his viral save-the-date wedding video, which was featured in Glamour) will screen his animated short film Cadaver for a select audience at The Standard East Village.

Based on a poem Mr. Ansell wrote to help his sister fulfill a creative assignment at Northwestern's medical school, the seven-minute film, which stars Ms. Gevinson, Kathy Bates and Christopher Lloyd, is about a cadaver that comes back to life to say goodbye to his wife. When he decided to develop the story into a short film, Ms. Gevinson, a family friend of Mr. Ansell, was his first pick for the lead, a young doctor.

“I kind of consider her a little sister to me,” said Mr. Ansell, who previously cast Ms. Gevinson in his first post-film school short.

“She stood out, even out of everyone that auditioned,” he said of their collaboration. “She has a profound awareness and insight into the world around her, even at a very young age.”

“This was before Tavi had become the Tavi that’s been imbibed by the public,” he explained.

The short also features Ms. Gevinson performing a rare Neil Young-sanctioned cover of “Heart of Gold,” which Mr. Ansell recorded in a Chicago home basement studio on Easter morning. (Ms. Gevinson is rumored to be performing it live at the Standard this weekend.) Mr. Ansell said the track, along with the short film and an adult picture book version, will be released later this year.

Ms. Gevinson and her costars are on board with expanding the project into a full-length feature, according to Mr. Ansell, who is looking for a production company with which to partner.

CADAVER - The Film - Trailer from JAMS on Vimeo.

Young.

Blue Rider Press, a new imprint at Penguin started earlier this year by industry veteran David Rosenthal, has signed its biggest book to date: a memoir by Neil Young.

"I felt like writing books fit me like a glove; I started and I just kept going," said Mr. Young in a statement about his new book, tentatively titled Waging Heavy Peace. "That's the way my Daddy used to do it on his old Underwood up in the attic.  He said, 'Just keep writing, you never know what will turn up.'"

The book is planned for publication in the fall of next year.

While an executive at Simon & Schuster, Mr. Rosenthal also acquired and published Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. I.

The world of model trains has always been a world deeply invested in realism: The building and the commanding of intricate networks of tracks is as much about the details, the minutia of shrubbery and of the built-to-scale technicalities as the act of playing the omnipresent conductor. But the Lionel model train company is the first to attempt to capture, in vivid sonic detail, the New York City subway soundscape. Hi-fi recordings of screeching breaks, hissing engines and the subterranean platform rabble were integral components of Lionel’s newly released M.T.A.-licensed reproduction.

The company, partially owned by singer-songwriter Neil Young, has also chosen New York City as the site of its first full-fledged shop, a holiday season pop-up in Rockefeller Center. While Lionel is a regular of model train fairs and expos across the country, the 1,100-square-foot store opening next week will be its first foray into retail leasing. Mr. Young plans to make an appearance to autograph the collector-edition train cars, which routinely command four-digit sums.

Jay Gilbert of Newmark Knight Frank represented Lionel. Landlord Tishman Speyer was represented in-house.

egeminder@observer.com

Point being, while there’s no doubt about his continued commitment to The Griz, the Eagles are no flash in the pan. The band’s latest effort, In Ear Park—which Rossen dedicated to his recently deceased father—certainly brings to mind Grizzly Bear’s beloved Yellow House, but the arrangements are tighter (without being fussy) and the mood lighter (without being peppy). And of course, with Rossen and his guitar at the helm, the musicianship is among the best you’ll find in Brooklyn indie rock. The Eagles play the Bowery Ballroom on January 19. [Tickets went on sale yesterday at noon]

And speaking of local indie bands (though, when aren’t we), The Pains of Being Pure at Heart head to the Mercury Lounge on February 7. While their music may be as precious as their name, the quartet brings an irresistible early-90’s nostalgia to their upcoming self-titled debut, due out in February. On “Everything With You” and “Young Adult Friction,” the Pains mix Brit shoegaze acts like Chapterhouse and Pale Saints with the Lemonheads at their catchiest to blissful effect. [Tickets on sale: Friday, December 5 at noon]

Mulling over whether to see Neil Young or Oasis at the Garden later this month? Mull no longer… We’re not saying tickets will definitely sell out, but ’tis the season to act fast, folks. Plus, the Gallagher brothers are bringing along Ryan Adams—who, it will surprise no one to learn, is already hard at work on his next record just over a month after he and his Cardinals released Cardinology. [Tickets on sale now]

COMEDY

If you haven’t seen Wet Hot American Summer, see it now. If you haven’t seen the MTV sketch comedy show, The State, rent the DVDs today. And if you haven’t seen Stella, the three-man comedy troupe featuring Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain—the guys behind Wet Hot, The State, and copious other hilarity—buy tickets now. They’re performing at the Nokia Theatre on December 8 and 9. [Tickets on sale now]

This heat sucks … we know. So what better way to beat it than by dancing yourself into a sweaty mess surrounded by hundreds of your under-hydrated peers in a shadeless pool? That’s the question JellyNYC poses all summer long with its free weekend "Pool Party" shows at McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg. If you’ve missed any of the fantastic acts (Liars, the Hold Steady) that have already performed this season, be sure to catch Brooklyn’s MGMT (It’s pronounced “M-G-M-T,” not “management,” by the way) and England’s fashion-pop duo, Ting Tings, this Sunday. MGMT's debut, Oracular Spectacular, is a pop intellectual’s feast—a giddy mix of disco beats, glam guitar and baroque synths. [RSVP here]

Webster Hall takes on another dance-worthy and much-hyped crew when Australia’s Cut Copy plays a double bill there starting September 21. Tickets went on sale yesterday. [On sale now]

And in other news, the Mountain Goats have a sort-of new album (it came out in February) called Heretic Pride, and they’re coming to the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Nov. 8 and Webster Hall the following day. Unless you want to be that guy, boogie to John Darnielle at your own risk. [On sale: Saturday, July 26 for the Music Hall of Williamsburg and Webster Hall]

THEATER:

Seen most recently in Guillaume Canet’s thriller Tell No One as François Cluzet’s lesbian sister, Kristin Scott Thomas will make her Broadway debut in Chekhov’s The Seagull this fall. Thomas, known for her supple brilliance in The English Patient and Gosford Park, won an Olivier Award for her performance as Arkadina in the play’s original sold-out run at London’s Royal Court Theatre. Joining her will be the lovable Peter Sarsgaard (one of Salon’s sexiest living men last year) making his own Broadway debut as the frustrated writer, Trigorin. Ian Rickson, who helmed the English production, will direct The Seagull for the Walter Kerr Theatre. Previews begin Sept. 16, with opening night slated for Oct. 1. This limited engagement runs through Dec. 21. [On sale: Saturday, July 26]

It’s already inspired a film and a graphic novel, and now Neil Young’s 2003 album Greendale has been adapted for the theater. Mr. Young’s concept album, which chronicles the changes wrought upon small-town America in 9/11’s wake through the eyes of three generations of the Green family, is now, according to the drummer for the production’s live band, “a play and an opera and a live concert all rolled into one.” (We can’t imagine.) Dallas’ Undermain Theater originally adapted Young’s 10-track record. The first of just four performances of Neil Young’s Greendale at Soho’s Ohio Theatre took place last night. Tickets are going fast, folks, so grab ’em before closing night on Saturday, July 26. [On sale now]

Two musical acts who call Brooklyn home have something new to fill the tinny earbuds of F train iPods. Raymond Raposa, otherwise known as Castanets—earns some unwanted street cred with In the Wines, written weeks after he was mugged outside of his Bed Stuy dwelling. Believe or not, the advance word is that the album is a bit dark. Given the critical acclaim he got for Cathedral and First Night’s Freeze, it’s something worth picking up.

The indie pop trio The Forms had their share of good press with the earnest post-rock Icarus, their debut album. That was over 4 years ago. Now they’re trying pick up where they left off. Their self-titled follow-up was produced by veteran Steve Albini (Nirvana, PJ Harvey, er, Bush) and they recently played four shows at CMJ. Take that, voice inside your head that says you should have gone to law school!

One may recognize Emmy Rossum from such popular films as Mystic River and The Phantom of the Opera. Well, she’s gone the route of her Opera co-star, Minnie Driver, and released an album. It’s called Inside Out. Her first single is all about how the world moves too fast, and how she wishes she could just slow it down. Her voice sounds more doctored than Cher’s on “Believe.” But it’s been listened to 179,250 times on her myspace page so maybe that's just what the world needed?

Neil Young hits record stores with Chrome Dreams II, the follow-up to the legendary 1977 acetate bootleg that had never been released. If you’re enough of a Neil Young fan or music geek to want all the details of the backstory then you already know it, so we'll stop there.

And Robert Plant and country star Alison Krauss release an album of covers, Raising Sand. They're no Jack White and Loretta Lynn, but judging from a snippet broadcast on NPR, they're not as awkward together as one might think.

PYGMALION

Who: Claire Danes, Jefferson Mays

When: Oct. 18 – Dec. 16

Where: American Airlines Theatre

How: Check for tickets here.

Pygmalion, starring Claire Danes as the street urchin who will become a society lady thanks to the help of a professor, played by Jefferson Mays, will open at the American Airlines Theatre tonight. Tony nominee David Grindley will direct The Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of George Bernard Shaw’s play based on the Ovid tale.

CONCERTS:

Wise up to lit rock sweetheart Aimee Mann at the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom on Dec. 14. [On Sale: Friday, Oct. 19 at 10 a.m.]

Manchester’s David Gray will perform his folk-rock, acoustic songs at the Beacon Threatre on Dec. 4. Bring tissues for his requisite performance of This Year’s Love. [On Sale: Friday, Oct. 19 at 10 a.m.]

New York’s Coheed and Cambria, whose new album No World For Tomorrow will be released next week, will unleash their high-pitched, prog rock anthems at the Roseland Ballroom on Nov. 29. [On Sale: Friday, Oct. 19 at noon.]

Remember when Brooklyn’s Nada Surf came out with that video for their song "Popular" in the mid-90’s and everyone lumped them into the “geek rock” realm along with Weezer? Well, they’re still around, making great music and looking just a scruffy/adorable as ever. They’ll be at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Feb. 7 and the Bowery Ballroom on Feb. 8. [On Sale: Friday, Oct. 19 at noon.]

Hey hey, Neil Young will come to United Palace Theatre on Dec. 18 to keep rocking in the free world and whatnot. [On Sale: Monday, Oct. 22 at 10 a.m.]