But what about the propulsive effect of the terza rima?
And the music, while played at a moderate level, is just plain weird, veering from what sounds like propulsive, generic European dance music to Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" to Nelly Furtado's 2006 hit "Promiscuous".
BOWERY BALLROOM 6 Delancey St. (212-533-2111) — June 11: Swasvedriver was often tagged with the "shoegazer" label (referring to early-nineties English bands with a droopy stage presence), even though the London band plays a brand of rock that is more propulsive than what's typically found in that genre.
As the novelist Katie Kitamura told me, "Her writing has the kind of urgency that is difficult to fake, and that's what makes the books so propulsive.
What's genuine is the propulsive energy the book shares with earlier chronicles of overgrown-adolescent angst and misbehavior, like Elizabeth Wurtzel's memoir "Prozac Nation" or Chuck Palahniuk's novel "Fight Club".
Simon had also written his most playful and powerful set of songs in more than a decade, from the giddy "You Can Call Me Al" to the propulsive "I Know What I Know" to the title track, which set out Simon's own debt to the rock and roll of the fifties, particularly the music of Elvis Presley.
That propulsive rhythm is what drives I Fought the Law, a top 10 hit in March 1966 for the Bobby Fuller Four, who gamely performed it on TV shows such as Hullabaloo and Shivaree, in jailhouse sets or backed by hot-stepping cowgirl go-go dancers brandishing six-shooters.
Ms. Acuña's set, or what I heard of it, was propulsive and polished, a new-world amalgam of pop harmony and folk rhythm.
His previous book was "Crime Beat," a collection of nonfiction pieces he wrote as a newspaper reporter, with glimmers of what would eventually become the tight, propulsive Bosch style.
His new "Concerto Grosso" had what seemed like an uncharacteristic dark and propulsive edge, a response, perhaps, to its urgent score by Bloch.
