I had a studio apartment in the West Village, which people were impressed by until they came up for a look. The place was the architectural equivalent of a biscuit dough remnant, a two-hundred-square-foot waste shape of crannies and recesses left over when the rest of the building had been sectioned into proper places to live.

Tower’s people are generally broken in one way or another. The streak of dark humour in many of these stories reminded me to varying degrees of Gates, Saunders, and Antrim, but Tower’s characters are often unusually clear-headed about where they went wrong:

Bob had not been close with his father, so it was puzzling for him and also for his wife, Vicky, when his father’s death touched off in him an angry lassitude that curdled his enthusiasm for work and married life. He had fallen into a bad condition and,in addition to several minor miscalculations, he’d perpetrated three major fuckups that would be a long time in smoothing over.

Tower’s approach to plot generally eschews obvious conflict/resolution narrative arcs. Things happen in the corners of these stories as well as in their foregrounds. These aren’t stories for the squeamish. The bone-chilling nightmare logic of “Down Through The Valley” snapped into sharp focus for me days after I finished it.

The title story is a startling departure from the more-or-less contemporary naturalism of the others: a compelling account of world-weary Vikings whose pillaging arises from a sort of dreadful inertia. It’s probably my favorite.

needs more demons? no. recommended.

But Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be is by no means only for aspiring record-deal-signers, or obsessive students of music culture. In fact, one of the awesome things about the book is how thoroughly outside-the-industry Trynin’s vantage point is. She found herself the object of an archetypical major label bidding war without having much prior knowledge of how such things work, and she doesn’t expect the reader to bring that knowledge either, nor does she get bogged down with business specifics. Although I think this memoir works well as a cautionary tale, it’s also a highly entertaining rags-to-riches-to-rags story, and Trynin brings the same sort of not-quite-what-you-expect sly wit and acuity to her prose that she once brought to her songs.

Needs More Demons? No. The only thing I want to change about this book is to tack on a feel-good happy ending where Trynin had a long, productive, if perhaps niche-y career as an independent artist. Unfortunately, although she played guitar with Loveless for a while, that hasn’t exactly come to pass so far.

While I don’t want to change the book, I do hope somebody assembles a glossary of all the names-changed-to-protect used in it, and I’m not steeped enough in Boston-ania to get very far. “Flint Raft” would seem to be Gravel Pit. “The Front Load” seems to be The Middle East. And…? Please feel free to help in comments.