You Must Go and Win Essays (Audible Audio Edition) Alina Simone Neil Gaiman Presents Books
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Award-winning author, narrator, and screenwriter Neil Gaiman personally selected this book, and, using the tools of the Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), cast the narrator and produced this work for his audiobook label, Neil Gaiman Presents.
A few words from Neil on You Must Go and Win "Her stories are funny, heartwarming, tragic - often all at the same time. Her subjects, whether music, religion, Russia, or family, are conjured and dissected with warm humor and sharp eyes. Probably it's a really good thing she never became an international rock star; she wouldn't have written this if she had.... This is her first audiobook, and she reads it as well as she writes."
In the wickedly bittersweet and hilarious You Must Go and Win, the Ukrainian-born musician Alina Simone traces her bizarre journey through the indie rock world, from disastrous Craigslist auditions with sketchy producers to catching fleas in a Williamsburg sublet. But Simone offers more than down-and-out tales of her time as a struggling musician she has a rapier wit, slashing and burning her way through the absurdities of life, while offering surprising and poignant insights into the burdens of family expectations and the nature of ambition, the temptations of religion, and the lure of a mythical Russian home.
Wavering between embracing and fleeing her outsized and nebulous dreams of stardom, Simone confronts her Russian past when she falls in love with the music of Yanka Dyagileva, a Soviet singer who tragically died young; hits the road with her childhood friend who is dead set on becoming an "icon"; and battles male strippers in Siberia.
Hailed as "the perfect storm of creative talent" (USA Today, Pop Candy), Simone is poised to win over fans of David Rakoff and Sarah Vowell with her irresistibly funny and charming literary debut.
You Must Go and Win Essays (Audible Audio Edition) Alina Simone Neil Gaiman Presents Books
I came to this author by the back door, during the course of some research related to Novosibirsk and Akademgorodok. I had no particular expectations but the title attracted me, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying this collection of essays. I loved Alina Simone's narrative voice - wry, wistful, and often hilarious - and her clever, inventive use of similes was particularly delightful (it's an under-appreciated art). Every essay is expertly crafted, skillfully written, entertaining and insightful. A book that deserves a wider audience and greater visibility.Product details
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You Must Go and Win Essays (Audible Audio Edition) Alina Simone Neil Gaiman Presents Books Reviews
I don't laugh out loud when reading books.
I laughed out loud several times while reading this book.
Funny, grim, despairing, and hopeful all at the same time. Plus unicorns.
It turns out that, in addition to being a great songsmith, Simone happens to be an incredible writer of prose. Her essays are often laugh-out-loud funny, always smart and heartfelt. Like indie rock's answer to David Sedaris, she paints her life with equal parts tragedy and comedy, and just the right amount of self-deprecation.
Alina Simone's critically (and, on occasion, uncritically) acclaimed collection of personal essays "You Must Go and Win," documents her circuitous path through music industry's wilderness and the discovery of her Russian roots. You must go and read it.
At the risk of overgeneralizing Simone deadpans as perhaps only an Eastern European can; her voice engages as perhaps only an American storyteller's is able to. Simone has been called "a frenzied, Eastern European musician's version of humorist David Sedaris." Both Simone and Sedaris find humor in the banality of life; both are self-identified outsiders; both are yearning for something defined only vaguely. But to compare the two is on par with saying that their last names begin with the letter S.
The Epic Struggle
In her review of "You Must Go and Win" in The Jewish Daily Forward, Yevgeniya Traps maintains that Simone belongs to the category of young immigrants who are "crippled by the realization that they--coddled and suburbanized--can never be as tough as their parents, who were disciplined by Communist deprivation and driven to the terrible risks of emigration. This second sort is moved to re-enact, typically with comical results, the experience of displacement and relocation in their career choices."
In the book, Simone recognizes how good she, born in Kharkov, Ukraine, but for all intents and purposes an American, has had it compared to her parents. She also knows that the safety and freedom of her American life deprived her of a force to combat (in fact, in a tacit acknowledgment of her parents' willpower, she mentions little by way of past rebellion against them). Traps's interpretation limits in scope the re-enactment of parental experiences. All kids follow in their parents' footsteps to some degree. Judging from from Simone's account, her parents' hardship translates into her entire existence. Children of exiles may carry their parents' spirit of displacement. But their fight is no longer against an outside power, it is against the self.
Searching for a Life
The late Michael T. Kaufman once told me that the best way to discover a place is to get lost. In "You Must Go and Win" Simone seems lost already, feeling her way through the darkness of uncertainty, grasping for signs. You get a sense that the journey to success is as painful as it is aimless. She tries art school, nonprofit work in Siberia, video-making, and the Orthodox faith, to name just a few experiences. Simone's sampling of what life throws her way resembles the patchwork of post-modern, progress-less existence. As I tried to make sense of the zigzags, I kept thinking that one of my mother's many sayings would describe them accurately "She doesn't know what to do with herself" ("Nevie, 'o so sebou," in the Slovak original).
Simone's search for identity is also a search for authenticity. While working in Siberia, Simone experienced "a latent desire to go native" and goes on to describe herself as "the daughter of Soviet political refugees and a person more than a little impatient (desperate?) to embrace my ancient heritage and lay claim to the corresponding dose of unbearable suffering that was my birthright," Like many immigrants making their way through America today, Simone seems to have realized that the real she seeks may be whence she came.
Simone seems no closer to her goal at the end of the book than she is at the beginning (one reviewer on complained of a confusing timeline). Yet it's no accident that "You Must Go and Win" is the title of the book's final essay. The absence of a clear destination, a map, or a schedule brings with it an openness to what may come. Along the way, adventures await.
The Best Things in Life Aren't Free
Simone conceals subtle hints at her own strength beneath the surface pathos of an artist's grind and her bizarre experiences. She knows discovery comes with a price, and she doesn't appear to want it to be free (if she were a sports buff she might be chanting, "No pain, no gain"). Traps is right to compare Simone's quest to making it in America. If, like Simone, you manage to at least keep your head up, you are already well on your way.
Here's a few words of wisdom "You Must Go and Win." No matter how cruel and forbidding life becomes in the cutthroat landscape where you've tossed your hat, persevere. Clunky, perhaps, but it's certainly a more uplifting message than the familiar, Don't Give Up! It's especially sound advice if you're slithering through the trenches of the indie rock world, as songstress Alina Simone so ably describes in her always compelling and always humorous collection of essays and memoir.
Simone has an engaging voice, both on stage and on the page. Like her lyrics and vocals which can be raw and edgy, her prose too pulls no punches, as she elucidates on universal subjects such as family, faith, career, and cat medicine. Simone was born in Ukraine but came to the states as an infant when her father was blacklisted by the KGB. She tells of her adventures back to the old country to connect with her nascent roots. She writes of a road trip documentary project with her old, childhood friend Amanda Palmer, pre-Dresden Dolls fame. Simone comments on the late Soviet singer Yanika Dyangileva, whose music she loved (and covered on an album), and how her affection for the singer led her to the Punk Monk, who in turn led her to examine personal matters of faith.
And there's a whole lot more, especially the Everest-size obstacles that await an indie rock singer or on the road to fame--or simply respectability. Yet despite the Craigslist meetings with would-be producers and well-intentioned startup labels that lead to nowhere, Simone's talent wins out. Although the hilarious anecdotes and self-deprecating prose is oftentimes more cautionary than inspiring, Simone's fresh voice is endearing and makes the reader pull for her every step of the way. Indeed, with her debut collection, she's gone out and won.
It's a warm and charming read with nuggets of gold embedded in it.
I find myself repeating "You must go. And win." and "Take off your pants and come drink with us" and laughing out loud in public.
This book is an amazing find. Hilarious, touching, and only moderately soul-crushing. The author laments that her following as a musician never amounted to more than a few "depressed Jews," but this book is sure to propel her career, and win her fame among many other groups, such as depressed Christians.
Book started out really good, then petered out. Will not be one of those books I read again, years later.
I came to this author by the back door, during the course of some research related to Novosibirsk and Akademgorodok. I had no particular expectations but the title attracted me, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying this collection of essays. I loved Alina Simone's narrative voice - wry, wistful, and often hilarious - and her clever, inventive use of similes was particularly delightful (it's an under-appreciated art). Every essay is expertly crafted, skillfully written, entertaining and insightful. A book that deserves a wider audience and greater visibility.
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