Sunday Papers - Book Review Peeves

- One of the things that I read religiously every week, in dead tree format, is the New York Times Book Review.  It makes me feel like I know a little something about most of the important books that are being published commercially even if I am unlikely to read them.  Often the reviews themselves are illuminating -- learned and concise discussions of all manner of subjects, some of which my knowledge is fairly minimal, leaving the sense of having been both educated and entertained in the process.  It seems to me, however, that with increasing frequency I am being subjected to book reviews by people -- generally big names of some kind -- who bring so much of their own intellectual bias to the review that the book itself is obscured and distorted.  In the last few weeks, I can think of at least three books where the reviewers were either completely unfair to the authors, laden as they were with their own ideological opposition to the works at issue (and possibly pecuniary issues with one reviewer), or where a review was hijacked for purposes of conducting the reviewer's own ideological war, in the process detracting from the much broader scope of the book being reviewed.  I guess it is a coup for the editors to land a big name reviewer to write -- it might well generate more interest at a time where I believe the Times has become the last newspaper in America to have a stand alone book review.  

The reviews that have drawn my ire in the last few weeks have been by British historian Niall Ferguson (professor of being wrong about pretty much everything at Harvard) on Richard Posner's latest book, The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy, which Ferguson uses to trumpet his own anti-Keynesian world view at the expense of really giving Posner's work the time of day.   Ferguson is a noted apologist for British imperialism, was a proponent of America taking up the white man's burden in the Twenty-first Century, and, oh yes, a consultant to a hedge fund, GLG Partners, in which Lehman brothers once held a stake.  Ferguson has in the past advocated the abolition of the federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with these programs replaced respectively with a federal sales tax, private savings accounts, and vouchers.  In short, he is a full on wingnut with a nice accent, a lovely intellectual pedigree, and an endowed Harvard chair -- in the words of one historian "the court historian for the imperial American hard right."  Oh, and speaking of endowed chairs and to prove he's truly a man for all seasons, when he's not apologizing for colonialism or advising hedge funds, he is slipping on the neo-condom and bonking Ayaan Hirst Ali.   (Although not his thing, Ferguson has the requisite street cred to be a social conservative having recently left his wife of 16 years for the afore-mentioned Ali.)

In other words, Ferguson has at least some kind of pecuniary interest in being wary of the financial regulation that he trashes in the Book Review, he has a long history of being an advocate for laissez faire governance, and a pronounced hostility to Keynesian economics and social spending generally.  Is this really the right man to review this book?

On a less obvious note, but one that in my opinion did an equal disservice to the book being reviewed was Harold Bloom's recent take on Trials of the Diaspora, a history of English anti-semitism by Anthony Julius.  The book in question is an 800 plus page history of anti-Jewish sentiment in Britain from the middle ages to the present.  Once again, a big named professor -- this time a professor of literature -- dedicates the bulk of his review to denouncing contemporary British academics who are hostile to Israeli policies towards the Palestinians.  Bloom paints such critics with a broad brush, characterizing them as anti-semites who want to see Israel cease to exist.  There is not a whole lot of nuance in the review and there is an air of anger about it -- it's really pretty much a tirade against an academic tendency that clearly infuriates Bloom.  

Now it may be that Bloom does the work justice -- this review by Antony Lerman in the Guardian, suggests that perhaps Julius and Bloom share a similar tone with respect to this subject. 

In any event, I found the review to be so pugnacious on this one subject as to cast a lot more heat than light and ultimately to be completely distracting with respect to the book being reviewed.  Numerous other readers evidently felt as I did judging by the large number of very cogent reactions against Bloom's polemic.  Again, I am not sure that what Bloom did can properly be called a book review and it strikes me as not consistent with the spirit of what I would expect in a review, which would be a detailed discussion of the book at issue, preferably by someone with serious knowledge of the subject in question, and someone who can react fairly to the thesis posed by the author.

Finally, there was this review of Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land by Josef Joffe, a Hoover Institute Fellow, who can fairly be described as an ideological enemy of the social democracy that Judt advocates in his short book.  Now, I don't object to a review being done by someone who is politically on the opposite end of the spectrum from an author.  If done fairly, this can be an enlightening exercise. 

But Joffe tarnishes his attempt with extreme intellectual dishonesty and sixth grade level caricature -- in his second sentence he claims Judt is preaching to the choir of "the Europhile liberal left, who would rather sell their Prius than forgo their New York Review of Books."  Not a promising start.  Joffe tries to make the case that government spending at all levels in the United States (40% of GDP in 2009) is comparable to that spent in places like Norway and Germany, without noting the 4% of GDP spent on defense, the fact that 2009 was an aberrant year due to the Stimulus and other measures aimed at the present crisis, the off budget costs for Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fact that the American welfare state spends more on health care due to the absence of a state run system -- i.e. private enrichment by public expenditure.  In the end he resorts to the cliched canard that Judt "has done better in America in terms of access and fame than an American of the same caliber would have done in Sweden or Germany. It is still easier to escape from the slums of America than from the banlieues of France."

As we have noted in an earlier thread, escape from the slums in the U.S. is becoming a taller order by the day.  Maybe if the Times decided to use an intellectually honest person to review this book, we, the readers, might actually be advised of this fact. 

I will not even discuss the choice of George Will to review my friend Rick Perlstein's brilliant Nixonland.  Talk about casting pearls before dishonest swine. 

Comments

[Corvus9]

I fail to understand how the NYRB can count as an item of liberal devotion, as Joffe aserts, if all it seems to do is published reactionary screeds against liberals.

Honestly, I can't wait for newsprint to die.

[Crissa]

Been watching Civil War era stuff on the History channel - the negative tones on the Union side are genuinely palpable. It gets really annoying to hear how corrupt Lincoln was and how improper it was to pardon Confederates. Sure, maybe one of his buddies started taking cash for it - that's corruption - but just pardoning people isn't corruption! And they implied as such before mentioning the later cash connection. It's not as if he didn't pardon every Confederate by the end of the war. Sheesh!

I want to learn about stuff, not listen to the reviewer or speaker's axe to grind.

[Delicious Pundit]

The NYTBR has gone downhill and become more ideological since Sam Tanenhaus took it over. The New York Times in general, worries too much about its right flank; it will never satisfy those people and the cost to its effectiveness is very great.

[Ewan]

I've definitely noted the same effect... I remember the review of Paul Krugman's "The Conscience of a Liberal" and Hendrick Hertzberg's "Politics: Arguments & Observations" characterized by much the same overt hostility and conservative savaging, so it's definitely not a new phenomenon.

[minstrel hussain boy]

i agree sir c. but then i've always been more that a wee bit harsh on critics.

to paraphrase e.e. cummings:

a critic is an arse upon which everthing sits but a man.

then there's that whole american tendancy to turn everything, including art into a list and competition. but, that's just me.

the best advice i got regarding criticism came from the great harry "the hipster" gibson who told me that

"you can read all the reviews or you can read none of the reviews. but if you read one, you gotta read 'em all."

ferguson is an example, like my ol' perfesser vic hanson, of how the study of history doesn't garauntee learning one fucking lesson.

and:

those who do not remember the past are doomed to keep voting republican.

[beckya57]

That's a problem for the whole media, not just the Times. The Times is a peculiar animal, though, in trying so hard to present itself as sort-of liberal, while simultaneously appearing to apologize by publishing endless liberal-bashing. It's not only in book reviews, but other examples include the parade of Clinton "investigations" and the ceaseless attacks on Al Gore (who, after all, wore earth tones and acted too smart). The Post is more overtly and consistently right-wing these days; Katherine Graham must be spinning in her grave. I read Krugman in the Times and Ezra Klein on the Post website and basically ignore all the rest of it, having a weak stomach. Incidentally, I graduated from the U of Chicago in 1978, and Harold Bloom was a well-known obnoxious crank way back then.

[beckya57]

Whoops, I think I'm getting my obnoxious Blooms mixed up. I was referring to the U of C's Allan Bloom, of "Closing of the American Mind" fame. I'm unfamiliar with the Harold variety, but he does sound quite similar.

[Corvus9]

Harold Bloom is considered by many to be the preeminent Shakespeare scholar, and is also a big fan of the Canon and the abhors the political analysis of literature. He was Camille Paglia's dissertation advisor and Naomi Wolf claims he took a pass at her when she was a student. He looks like a Vogon.

Considering that the last time MHB ranted about lists and competition for art was because I posted a bunch of lists, and because I was too cowed by his badassery to respond, let me now use this opportunity to make a defense, or justification, for the compiling of lists.

First, some art is better than other art. It just is. We all know this, right? The Beatles, for example, are better than the Jonas Brothers. They are superior artists. I think this seems self-evident, and slightly intuitive, but I hope everybody agrees on this.

Now, if some art is better than other art, and some artist better than other artists, that means there must be some objective level of quality to art. There must be some way, some system of rules by which those which are better end up being better. But figuring out what this is, for any art, it really really hard.

Lists are a starting point for this. Usually, the best piece or artist in a particular genre or medium is quite easy to single out. The Beatles are the best rock band of all time. William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the History of the English language (maybe in all languages: I mean, Nabokov seemed to rank him above everyone else, and he spoke everything). Watchmen is the Greatest Comic Book of all time, and Alan Moore is the greatest comic writer of all time. Ulysses is the Greatest novel. None of these statements seem particularly controversial to me. And by pinpointing these things, it makes it possible to pick out what are the actual aesthetic properties of various media, which gives us some idea of how art works. And thus, if we can figure out what the second greatest, and third greatest (and so on) work of a particular genre or media or timeperiod, then that gives us even more information.

Of course, this is something of a backwards approach, because in order to figure out which works go where, or why or why not they do, you really have to figure out what those standards of art are. This means any list is invariably just a jumping off point for arguing over the aesthetics, so that a later, and better list can be created, with personal sentimentality and preference weeded out. This also means that any list created is doomed to be a failure, in the since of being accurate, but so what? The point is really to talk about art, and figure out what makes it good, or bad. Because if we figure that out, we can start making more good art. And even if we don't create it, at the least we can now appreciate it more for it's qualities.

So I don't see lists as some way of sterilizing art, of making it dead or competitive. It is ultimately a way of trying to figure out why it works. It's just a slightly backwards way of going about doing that.

Does that make sense?

[MR Bill]

SOmetime, I think the Canon is just a way of making one's own reading list (for, say, a graduate level class) more meaningful. Corvus, what you say makes sense, as these lists are just a start. Bloom seemed to want to freeze the canon into something reflecting his own image, and who the fuck is Harold Bloom to tell us what is proper to read?
I seriously set out to read 'the great books', and realized it was a project I would never finish.
When I ran the bookstore, I had the same feeling about the NYTBR: they were willing to give reviews to partisans for their own purposes. See Gore Vidal for someone who feel slighted by the Grey Lady.
I much preferred the New York Review of Books or the late lamented Kirkus Reviews.

[litbrit]

C, did you read Graydon Carter's review of the new Martin Amis bookThe Pregnant Widow yesterday?

It's great that you wrote this today, because I was having the same thoughts yesterday: when did my NYT book review get taken over by celebrity reviewers?

In the piece, we get to hear about Carter's disappointment in missing out on some of the American Sexual Revolution in the 70's because he was living in prim, dull Canada (or something).

We get to hear about Amis' wild ways as a young man. We're told, for the umpteenth time, about his strained relationship with his father Kingsley, and we're reminded, yet again. that there was (and remains) a lot of residual father-son-son-father resentment issues. Carter even trots out Kingsley's famous, repeated-ad-nauseum line about finding his son's writing "unintelligible".

Oh, the book?

Apparently it's funny, and it gives the reader a sense of what Amis' next work will be about. That's all, folks--two pages of stale gossip and an incredibly generalized pronouncement that Amis is the master of the twisty sentence (well, duh) and, yet fucking again, a namedropping of Britain's literary Who's Who, so we'll know with whom Martin likes to party. What a dreadful, lazy review, Graydon. I am piqued that the Times are doing this to my favorite section. Sheesh.

Anyway, I ordered it earlier in the year, from Amazon UK, because I adore Martin's writing. I'll write a review--a real one--of the book when I read it, which is to say, once it reaches the top of the stack currently teetering away on my nightstand.

[big bad wolf]

way to look sharp, SC!

the nyt book review has been running downhill for a long, time, at least a decade. i don't think that will be solved by the death of newsprint; i don't see that many good reviews of books on the web either. too many are either book reports (and then this happened and then this happened and this seems to relate to some currently batted about cliche) or idiosyncratic without engaging a book's theme. or i just get ever crankier.

i like good reviews of books, movies, or music. truth be told, i usually like movie reviews better than movies. a good review should open up a discussion, identify the themes and suggest how the artist deals with or doesn't deal with the many aspects of a theme. in short, a review, done right, should make us think or feel something about the ideas or experieinces that we either hadn't noticed or had an inchoate sense of but hadn't been able to begin articulating. or it should annoy us into thought, but not by mere repetition of shibboleths and devotionals, liberal or conservative. in theory, everything we read should do that in small measure, even blog comments, but of course they don't, another reason i doubt that the death of newsprint will make us much better.

it's gotta be hard to be the subject of a review, mb. almost as hard to be the subject of a well done one as a poorly done one.

is there anyone gore vidal hasn't felt slighted by? perhaps it is all a game (although then it has long ago become a rather stale one), but vidal invariably comes across as the unappreciated smartest man in the world who possess a certainty that we poor mortals can barely dream of, or maybe not, we may be too limited event to dream of what he comprehends daily.

[minstrel hussain boy]

the biggest assest in the emotional makeup an artist can have is selfishness. yes, the applause in the case of performers, the purchases and looking for visual artists is all part of it, but, the overarching drive for an artist is to get stuff out from inside you on account of if you don't you'll fucking explode.

i agree with you corvus that the beatles were far superior as artists than the jonas brothers. thing is though, over christmas, i pulled some strings and called in some favors so that my young neice could attend a jonas brothers concert and go backstage to meet the lads.

in her young life, that is the most exciting night she's had. i think the jonas brothers suck and represent the worst of canned pablum dreck pop out there sucking today. my niece thinks otherwise. does that make her less of a music lover than me? does my long time and financially rewarding stint in the studios making earworm jingles to sell soap and shit like that make me less of an artist? if it does, well, fuck all ya'll cause i did it to feed and clothe my kids.

does the fact that i love working with barry manilow making jingles mean that the time i've spent with more "significant" players is diminished? again, if it does, fuck all ya'll. barry is a genius at putting together a jingle that works, and sticks, and can be wrapped into coherent 20, 10, and 30 second chunks. he's so good at that stuff that i almost have forgiven him for "mandy."

[minstrel hussain boy]

p.s. one of the best things i've ever felt onstage was one night after van morrison did a smoking reggae (my arrangement) version of "brown eyed girl."

we were met with cold, stony, unapproving and unforgiving silence.

van, who has himself a pair, looked out at them and said

i knew you wouldn't like that one, that's why we did it.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

Don't confuse the New York Review of Books -- quite liberal and Tony Judt's home base -- wht the New York Times Book Review. they're pretty different animals. The New York Review of Books is really one of the few places where you get to hear some genuinely democratic left voices.

I sympathize totally with what mhb says about lists, and yet, like Corvus, I kind of dig them. I am sure to an artist they are frustrating as hell -- I've quoted it before, but it always seems so spot on -- Lou Reed noting that you work your ass off all year on a record only to get a B+ from Robert Christgau. The thing is -- those little four or five sentence reviews by Christgau were sometimes small works of art themselves. (Try being that concise in anything as an experiment.)

mhb,

I think live musical performances must be the best and worst of both worlds -- a certain joy of playing before an audience and the opportunity for spontaneous creation -- and the flip side, the fact that many in audience just want you to replicate what they've heard on a record. The best artists I've seem somehow seem to find that middle ground between those two things.

It's funny that you extol Manilow's virtues, because I recall Voice o' Reason having worked on a TV show with him once and telling me how impressed she was with him -- how totally engaged he was and how much he did not want to phone it in. He sounded very professional in the best sense of the word.

D.,

I read that review as well and thought, much as you did, that it kind of stepped all over the work. I am afraid that Amis, like Norman Mailer, is probably never going to get a work reviewed in a vacuum. Of course, he probably shares some blame in this for being so good at self-promotion.

Becky,

Yeah, Alan Bloom was a ubiquitous scold of another era. A guy who in 1987 still thought that Mick Jagger was subverting America's youth. Interstingly, he was pretty flamboyantly gay -- a barely fictional version of him is presented in Saul Bellow's "Ravelstein" -- but that did not stop him from becoming a big Republican hero of the late Reagan years.

Harold Bloom is I think a far more distinguished scholar, but also becoming a little bit of a crank in his old age. Naomi Wold (who allegedly advised Gore to dress in earth tones -- more Times BS) claimed that he secually harrassed her when she was at Yale.

bbw,

I think a really good critic can be invaluable and open all kinds of doors to you. One of the things I really object to about these celebrity reviews is that the people writing them are seldom all that learned in the areas that they are writing about. Oft times they have reached the point where they merely have a marketable schtick -- see e.g. Ferguson and the truly execrable Stanley Fish, who has become Camile Paglia with a slightly smaller dick.

Vidal is a bit of a joke at this point. A clever man, but that's it. Merely clever. I'm never really proud to claim him as a man of the left.

[Sir Charles]

Oy, forgive the typos. That was a truly Yglesias like.

It's Naomi Wolf, among other things.

[big bad wolf]

to be fair, i think allan bloom was a pretty good plato scholar before he took up being a scold. i remember reading "the closing of the american mind" and busting up laughing at bloom's oh-so-serious indictment of jagger. really, allan, you must keep up with who the devil is that decade, i thought.

stanley fish has been quite disappointing in recent years. i really liked many of the essays in "there's no such thing as free speech" (particularly the essay on rorty and posner), but now he just cranks out "provocations" in cranky old man style. it's beyond my purview but my understanding is that fish was an epochal milton scholar before turning to social play.

mb, you may be ready to forgive him cause you had fun with him and made money (which i don't begrudge you or anyone else) and i agree manilow was great with jingles and that is a talent, but even if he has nearly paid off mandy, he still has i write the songs and copacabana on the books.

i too blame naomi wolf for any typos

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

I agree that Bloom was considered a big time Plato scholar at UChicago. I guess I am cretinous enough to find that stuff not all that interesting, so I wasn't as impressed. (i'm not that big of a political theory guy.)But the Jagger fixation -- in 1987 -- made me howl. Bloom seemed to have no idea that Jagger was well into his 40s at that point and wasn't really anyone's idea of the cutting edge of rebellion at that point. Hell, sid Vicious had been dead for nearly a decade by then.

I remember having a very good opinion of Stanley Fish and then being shocked at the contrarian tripe that he now produces. It's really awful -- badly written and badly reasoned.

[Sir Charles]

More importantly I'm very disappointed to have drawn neither cheers nor jeers for "neo-condom."

[litbrit]

Sir C, I have an almost identical reaction to Fish. I loved his bit about cars, I will admit--he defended the mid-century American greats, particularly the Muscle Car movement, and lamented their inevitable demise as the internal combustion engine falls out of favor (and rightly so). His writings on same have been laced with romanticism and nostalgia, and any Boomer or early Gen-Xer like me who wasn't moved by them must surely have a heart of stone, must surely have been someone who never experienced the thrill of whipping around the highway at triple-digit speed in a lime-green Barracuda, his (or her) sweetheart sitting in the passenger seat, going faster, faster! (Yeah, I was the one driving.)

All too often, though, Professor Fish goes for the red-meat-tossing tactic. It gets the discussion going, sure, but his stance seems more than a little contrived, more than a little staged. Bo-ring.

[litbrit]

Oh, and re: Ali, who appeared on Bill Maher last week, I have to say, WTF???

She kinda-sorta defended libertarianism for a while there, and then backtracked when someone brought up the inherent ills of No Government Whatsofuckingever.

Logical extremes are not just useful tools for showing adamant arguers where, exactly, they are heading. They are also useful to scare the shit out of delusional followers.

And that's what people need to be doing, to counteract the teabagger/Talibunny pronouncements to which far too many people are, sadly, paying attention.

[Corvus9]

"Don't confuse the New York Review of Books -- quite liberal and Tony Judt's home base -- wht the New York Times Book Review."

Oh, I totally fucked up. See, I spaced out on the difference between them and thought Joffe was referring to that magazine that he himself was publishing in. The NYRB is in fact quite awesome, as is Tony Judt. It's the NYTBR which is the writerly clusterfuck.

[Corvus9]

MHB, I in no way begrudge your niece her enjoyment of The Jonas Brothers. As someone who grew up loving Transformers and He-Man, to castigate the any young person for the embrace of bad art would be hypocritical. That said, I can only hope that her appreciation of the Jonas Brothers leads her to other and better music, and leads to a deepening and better appreciation of music. The problem would be if, after being exposed to all that other music, you still thought the Jonas Brothers are better than the Beatles. That's just unacceptable.

I also in no way begrudge you your work in advertising. Getting to do what you love, for pay, is something to respect and envy, and there is still of level of artistry in it, as there is in any musical performance. However, there would be a problem if one were to assume that such performances carried the same artistic weight as, say, writing "Hey Jude."

I think the important thing to note about lists, and criticism in general, is that it does not have to come from a place of tearing people down and lambasting a work of art. They can raise people up, and be used as a tool to study it, and explain it, and understand it. Criticism, at least the good criticism, comes from a place of love, even when it is, well critical, because to engage a subject, deeply, at great length, is to honor it, and then attempt to share that honor with others. It is an ode. Good reviews are about communing with the reader in the appreciation of art, if not the particular piece under consideration (because the reviewer hates it), than art in general (because attacking bad art is usually implicitly about desiring good art, and wanting more good art). I can't see how an artist could argue that the audience shouldn't try to appreciate art, and so I can't see how it is fair for artists to despise all critiques (including lists). Yeah it hurts when it is negative, but I think it is a necessary part of how us, the audience, engage with it.

And hey, it's not like you have to read them.

[Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle]

Corvus9:
I would hope that the Jonas Brothers is one of those goofy things kids do. Hell, there was a time I thought Culture Club was all that. Remember New Kids on the Block? Boyz II Men? Tiffany? Debbie Gibson? Same shit different, different day, really.

[Crissa]

Just as long as you don't expect me to rate everything that an artist does above another artist. The Beatles were great, couple songs from Elvis were awesome, but that doesn't mean everything they touch is gold. (I'm no Elvis fan).

[Corvus9]

I remember watching the New Kids on the Block cartoon on Saturday mornings. Thankfully, I never listened to their music, so I don't have to feel completely unclean.

Aw man, wouldn't it have been awesome to have had a Saturday morning cartoon starring the Beatles? Like, in the moptop phase, modeled on Hard Day's Night. It could even be in black and white!

[Corvus9]

Who mentioned Elvis? I didn't mention Elvis. I happen to to rarely think of Elvis. People are like Elvis are like people who like the Beach Boys and people who like the Rolling Stones. They think their favorite band/singer (who produced a lot of crap) is in some dualistic relationship with The Beatles, continuously vying for supremacy, when they are all wrong. The Beatles were only ever vying with themselves.

[big bad wolf]

oh corvus, you are ever so wrong. paul never did get over wanting to be little richard, and john took on the whole crew from elvis and chuck berry through the stones and dylan. sometimes they outdid them, sometimes they were outdone---lyrically they never touched bob or berry, they never rocked nearly as tough or as tightly as the stones did at their peak, and sonically they never sounded as gorgeous as good vibrations. that doesn't mean the beatles weren't great, it simply means there are more things on earth than are thought of in your beatleology.

also, it is not quite so clear that ulysses is the be-all and end-all of the novel. :)

mmmmmm-bop. hanson. now that was a catchy kiddie band. and the eggo waffle hanson boxes were one of my favortie commercial tie-ins ever.

[minstrel hussain boy]

wolf me bruddah! that's the biggest problem with the whole list/competition thing.

how can you compare a performers who are wildly different in both style and art and say "this wins?" i don't get that now, i am of an age where i probably never will. everybody can hit one or two out of the park, the beatles score points with me for their length of dominance on the scene and their sheer courage in taking risks and chances.

i've done just about every kind of gig out there. some stuff i hate so fucking much that i thank the lord i've accumulated "fuck you" money. you will never, ever, no more, nunca, find me at one of those festivals that are so beloved of folks in genre music. no more dixieland festivals (even though i loves me some stomp jazz), no more bluegrass festivals, no more blues festivals or shit like that.

there are always too many fucking experts out there who are walking around just waiting for a chance to lynch somebody for coloring outside of their big important lines or breaking one of their cherished rules. they know more about that kind of music than anyone who has ever played it. the part that they don't get is that by setting up these conventions and restrictions as canon, sacred and inviolable, they are killing the very thing that they love. blues happened because of a confluence of west african, european, native american and other cultures collided. a few years ago taj mahal did a great album where he took players from gabon, and other west african nations and had them play old blues on their native instruments. the effect is mesmerizing, and the players already knew the structures and phrasing because they were living where it all came form.

there have been two moments in my life where i heard something and the only thing left to do was to walk into the instrument room, look at all my treasures and say "ok kids, we're starting over..." one was the first time i heard reggae. it was cheesy old, poor production value stuff, but the playful yet sophisticated phrasing, the bounce, the political and spiritual content of the lyrics all blew me right out of the water. i began to incorporate some of the things they did into my own music. things like "sprung" phrasing. you get your drums playing a four bar pattern, the bass is off doing sixes, the guitar player tens, the singer eights at the end of each main phrase somebody is starting, somebody ends, a couple are pulling straight through which gives the music wild impetus.

and when they all jump one at the same time, mercy.

then, paul simon did "graceland" and there i was again, feeling like a rank beginner. the bass lead, the accordian rythym ax, knowing that from now on i was going to need three or four drummers to feel right about things....damn.

as far as giving the audience what they want or demand, think about the five straight years dylan spent getting booed off of stages all over the world because he quit "being true to folk." thing was, he was being the most true of them out there. without change, without innovation, without constant meddling and fudging of boundries by the artists music becomes static, staid and a whole lot less fun.

if you like something, if it touches you deeply and is evocative with your emotions.

it's. good.

nuff said.

[Corvus9]

Ulysses is not the be all end all of the novel. No novel could be. There just doesn't happen to be one that is better (that is, of higher artistic merit).

While it's true John and Paul often borrowed and played with the styles of those other guys, I have never gotten the impression that they thought of them as artistic equals, just guys that did certain thing they liked better than them. John and Paul were never thinking that Brian Wilson or Mick and Keith were in any way a threat to their artistic status, and the elder guys were heroes that, while they revered, they also seemed to be very deliberately moving beyond. (Paul may have wanted to be Little Richard when he wrote I'm Down, but I doubt he was of much concern when writing "Michelle.") The only guy they probably thought of as on par with themselves was Dylan, but then John wrote "I am the Walrus" in part because he thought many of Dylan's lyrics were nonsense, and "I can write this shit too."

-lyrically they never touched bob or berry,

Name a better set of lyrics Than "A Day in the Life." A Dylan lyric. The idea that Berry was a superior lyricist is almost below contempt.

they never rocked nearly as tough or as tightly as the stones did at their peak,

"Revolution" and "Helter Skelter" They rocked pretty near when they wanted too. they were just too busy with other things.

and sonically they never sounded as gorgeous as good vibrations.

"Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" "Tomorrow Never Knows" "Something" I could go on, because honestly, I think Good Vibrations is overrated. The verses aren't catchy, the noise is out of place, and the chorus hook is standard pop bubblegum.

BBW, you are wrong on the internet!!!

[Corvus9]

how can you compare a performers who are wildly different in both style and art and say "this wins?"

Figuring out the answer to this question is basically precisely why I said lists were useful. by trying to come up with a list, you get closer to some idea of the objective standards of art.

Let me say, though, and this is very important, because I think mhb might be reading it into my comments, and it's not meant to be there, that there is no possibility, NONE, or making objective comparisons across genre. It is simply not possible. That's why I restricted myself to talking about art and artists, individually.

See, any specific piece of art is, in a sense, creating its own aesthetic structure. It may be in reference to or in conversation with a genre, but that is really no different than being in conversation with the world, which all art must do on some level, so it is just part of an artwork interrelation with the world. Within this communication, the artwork creates or recreates an aesthetic form, bending existing genres or structures (two and a half minute pop song, the western musical scales, guitar tones) until they are fashioned into something unique, (A specific song or a recording of that song) that is, by subject of it's own uniqueness (it is this set of notes played in this way on these instruments and recorded in this way and so on) that is then, a sole aesthetic construct. To judge art objectively would be to judge an artwork on the it's depth or complexity and how well that relates to it's balance or perfection. How good does the artwork do and doing what it seems to be trying to achieve? And it is these two rubrics that are important: depth and perfection, some works are deeper than other and some are more perfect, and so you have to take both into account when judging the relative objective quality. (For example, Nabokov seems to have more perfection than, say, Faulkner, but Faulkner has more Depth,I think)

But because genres are nothing more than loose conglomerations of certain works, and ultimately figments humanity's tendency towards pattern recognition, judging genres ultimately doesn't work. the best you could say is that, the average of one genre is better than another, if the genres are of lopsided quality, but that would involve an inhumanly exhaustive compilation of data. And still, it just tells you that more talented writers gravitated towards one genre than another, and doesn't tell you anything about the genre, because genre's don't have artistic merits. The only reason some people like some genres more than others is because of personal preference, rooted in personal history, which has nothing to do with a work's self-generated aesthetics. Comparing rock to hip hop is as goofy as comparing sci-fi to fantasy. It tells you nothing about art.

This is the first time I am typing out thought I have been typing thought I have been carrying around for quite awhile, and typing very late at night too, so I apologize for their incoherence and circularity. Let me know if there are points I need to clarify.

[big bad wolf]

corvus, i'm with mb. it's a wonderful world with many beautiful people who make amazing sounds. an insistence on the primacy of a particular artist doesn't work for me. talking about music with people who love it and trying out the things they have suggested or been enthusiatic about---i'm good with that. ranking, not so much,* and insistence on primacy, not at all.

that said, i'll make these comments, not to be right, but suggest why letting go off a defintive view of the beatles as apart might be a good idea (they can still be your favorite!)

i don't know paul and i didn't know john, so i don't know what they were thinking about. i wouldn't trust public utterances on the subject of how they felt about other bands, if that is what you are relying on, and i wouldn't trust private conversations recounted years later, memory is at best only somewhat accurate and unable to sort out the many things that made and shade it.

i think the only thing one can trust on this is the music, and you hear all those contests and strivings in the music, whether or not the person acknowledges them and even when the person specifically disclaims them. one hears, in the phrase harold bloom used for literary forbears, the anxiety of influence (music moves faster than books, so the anxiety extends to peers as well as predecessors)

john was one of the great rock singers of all times, and the influence of elvis presley is all over his vocals. john was distinct and a remarkable talent but he would not have been john if there had been no elvis. now, i happen to think john would have beeen better off if he had not competed with dylan. i am the walrus is just embarassing in my opinion and shows that john failed to understand what made dylan's lyrics work---allusiveness and implication linked to specific, if oddly juxtaposed detail, and drawing on a wealth of sources and experience, and, most importantly perhaps, a poetry in phrasing that made the heard sum cohere. a day in the life is much better but, off the top of my head, i think visions of johanna, just like tom thumb blues, absolutely sweet marie, and the ballad of frankie lee and judas priest (the real judas priest song ;)) are all as good or better. oh and most of planet waves and almost all of blood on the tracks, put out at a time where john was making rock n' roll---that is covering 50s songs.

and, whether or not you like them, to say that the beach boys did not influence the beatles and cause them to strive sonically is also refuted by the records (and of course the beach boys influeced many others). to say this doen't diminish the beatles. to the contrary, they showed they were open and listening. we shouldn't now insist beatles music was born only in their very special heads.

i would urge you to relisten to berry's lyrics more, not as homework, that never works, just let them flow over you next time. i think them full of fun vocabulary, bright images, and subtle social signals.

don't you think that, far from outrunning little richard, paul is channeling him in hey jude?

here's a song i love. no words
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x5kPVITRXM

*i have a couple of close friends who love the desert island game. my answer has been teh same for 30 years: i don't play that game, my favorties change too much, and it is too depressing to think about what might get lefft behind (what, i made etoile de dakar number 11, i can't live without that. ahhhh! better, i find for me, not play), but i suspect strongly that astral weeks would be on it. that one got my soul.

[big bad wolf]

corvus, i think faulkner has more depth.

[big bad wolf]

mb, i am so with you on the restrictions, and that's jsut as a listener. i remember when i got into blues 30 years ago and how it blew me away and how it was still sometimes alive---not just the old guys (i saw muddy and j.b. hutto, and others)---but new blood too, my frined and i sat with son seals one night at the bar between sets and talked about where he hoped to go.

then it got all festivalized and lines got set. not so much fun when everyone sounds like they're supposed to sound. howlin wolf leaps out of my ipod 50-60 years later because he was himself, not a genre.

same with jazz. it's great to have great stuff recognized, but putting it in a museum format (no names, but WM and LC are the person and place that annoy me the most :) and recreating what was genuinely daring at the creation isn't what i want to hear. that's what records are for---capturing the moment when something burned bright and new. live, it should be about a new new. that doesn't mean i don't like to hear brown-eyed girl done the 1967 way, but it does mean i'm willing to hear it done differently.

[big bad wolf]

again, i blame naomi wolf, among other things for the typos

[kathy a.]

most of this conversation is over my head. but corvus, re the beatles and saturday morning cartoons -- ringo starr did thomas the tank engine. it was a narrator role, though. i don't think i've quite recovered from the thomas-mania that enthralled certain persons in my household back when.

[minstrel hussain boy]

one thing that i have always loved doing, and not because it is something audiences love but because other musicians get a large charge out of it, is to take a familiar song, and bring in from somewhere else.

sometimes it happens to me in a flash, other times i have to work at it, but, usually by flipping or changing the instrumentation i can make something familiar all of a sudden new.

the best example i can give is when i take out a 5 string banjo and play cyndi lauper's "time after time."

i start with a straight instrumental, the melody comes out loud and clear. when i do this i watch the puzzled looks on the faces of the listeners. they know that they know the song, but, they can't put a finger on what it is. as i keep playing they keep reaching and searching for that familiar tune to give it a name.

then i start the vocals and see them smile, and relax. then they go with it and we all have a great time.

other examples are bob marley "no woman no cry" on the celtic harp. paul simon's "an american tune" on the autoharp. bluegrass arrangement of queen's "fat bottomed girls." reggae arrangments of "sugar, sugar," or a soft jazz take on "loch lomand."

i love the stuff done by the pogues and flogging molly where traditional music is electrified and rocked.

if music stays static or the same, like a shark that quits swimming, it dies.

[beckya57]

Charles, I loved the neo-condom. Sorry you felt slighted.

Alan Bloom was a prominent Plato scholar, but he was a scold in that arena too. When I was at Chicago (approximately a million years ago) we had to read his translation of the Republic. Our professor, who was a delightful guy (unlike most Chicago profs) obviously didn't think much of Bloom and took great pleasure in making fun of Bloom's rant in defense of his translation vs. the prevailing one at the time. Bloom's view was that the other guy (can't remember the name) wasn't literal enough in his translation, and that this was some kind of huge problem that reflected major character deficits in the other guy. With this background, I wasn't surprised at all when "The Closing" came out. And no, I didn't bother to read it, and didn't know about the Jagger-bashing. I'm going to annoy everyone now by mentioning that I like the Stones and Bowie much more than the Beatles (I am a huge Dylan fan too, if that helps). I'm not dissing the Beatles' genius, just saying they're not my thing. Kind of like my reaction to the Mona Lisa vs. The Nightwatch: I can see they're both great art, but the former leaves me cold, while I could look at the other for hours (and have).

[Sir Charles]

becky,

You can join big bad wolf and I here in the Stones caucus. Although I always liked the Beatles, I remember seeing clips of the Stones live at Madison Square Garden in 1972 on the Dick Cavett Show when I was 12 -- well, and it had the effect on me that Alan Bloom feared -- I did not want to read the Republic and I only wanted to get laid.

My wife did a stint at grad school at U Chicago in the mid-80s and found the description of it "as the place where fun went to die" as uproariously apt.

Ignore my pathetic please to be told how clever I am -- I blame Mick Jagger. And Naomi Wolf.

Corvus,

I do not believe that Lennon or McCartney would ever be in favor of dissing Chuck Berry or Little Richard. Listen to the first couple of Beatles records and you will see the debt owed -- and the degree to which both were informed by their predecessors. McCartney does an amazing Little Ricard impression as a vocalist and with respect to Lennon -- just listen to his "Rock 'n' Roll" album and you'll get a sense of his reverence for the music of Berry and other pioneers of rock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_'n'_Roll_(John_Lennon_album)

[Corvus9]

Big bad wolf, I think you and me and have started talking past each other, because I can't quite figure out how what you're writing is responding to opinions I actually have. Let me try simplifying where I am coming from.

1. a)Certain works of art of obviously superior to certain other works. ex. Ulysses > The Da Vinci Code b) Certain artists are more talented than certain other artists ex. James Joyce > Dan Brown

2. a) If (1) is true, than there must actually be some objective standard of quality in art and the talent of artists. b) If there is no objective standard, than (1) cannot be true, and the relative quality of art is completely subjective. This means that Dan Brown is arguably as good a writer as James Joyce, The Da Vinci Code as good a book as Ulysses.

3. Assuming (2), then the objective quality of art should in theory be measurable in small and smaller increments, even down to knowing the precise order. After all, all works of art are unique, and should thus have completely a completely unique "value."

4. a) If there is a platonic value to art, as proposed in (3), than it is a worthy topic to consider just which works of art (and by extension the talent of their creators) are superior to which. b) Discussion of a) brings us closer to an understanding just what makes art good or bad, which is a more interesting topic anyways, but one that is hard to come at head on.

5. One way of achieving 4a is by compiling a list, as a kind of hypothesis, which serves as a jumping off point to the discussion of 4b. There are other methods as well.

6. None of the above points touch on whether or not art should be mutable in form and genre or not, or whether or not festivals suck.

Is this really that disagreeable or unclear?

[big bad wolf]

corvus, i think we are not talking past each other so much as, each in turn, discussing what each of us thinks about why or why not rankings are useful or accurate, and also expressing some views, specific and general about the beatles and their place in pop/rock music. i'd mark the beginning of this conversation at your comment above about the beatles being supreme and others being merely dimissible, so i think of it more as an influences/place thing than an aesthetic criteria discussion.

on your proposition above, i'd say my agreement ends after 2. some works are objectively better---in terms of craftsmanship and complexity---than others. that only gets us so far, to joyce is better than brown, and the beatles are better than chad and jeremy, perhaps as far as the beatles are better than U2 . but after that it is not so useful at drawing the precise, ordered distinctions that you wish to draw. far too many of the criteria that you would rely on at that level are too subjective. what constitutes depth or balance, and how do we define form---beyond say a pop song or a rock song, and even that has subjective parameters. for example, you hear helter skelter as proof that the beatles could rock like the stones; i hear an amped-up pop song that lacks the underlying toughness and interlocking riffs and bottom of street fighting man or stray cat blues. now is that because one form is a pop song and one is a rock song or because we haven't agreed on the parameters of the form? and if one of us gets to define the parameters isn't that a subjective thing, as surely neither you nor i have ever seen or heard the platonic pop or rock song form (and in any case the pop song form could easily be something like dancing in the dark (the old one, not springsteen) or anything goes, both of which blow, say, michelle, out of the water). and we haven't even gotten to what value, if any, we give a song's content. for example, the beatles are likely a better pop/rock form band than the clash, but even lesser clash songs like straight to hell are far deeper and more mature worldly political songs than anything john lennon ever put forth. so the clash must outrank the beatles, if that is the metric.

for these reasons, i cannot accept your way to defining a precise order. even if i could, i don't see how we could use it to precisely show that one band was the best. if all the works are unique than we should arrive at a ranking that shows songs or albums, at most, not a band as superior.

i think there is a lot of good stuff out there and that once we sort the lesser songs from the greater, either because they are just not that good or because we are valuing seriousness and thus, for example, mmmm-bop, it is hard to sort the less great from the slightly more great and that that higher level sorting can vary from day to day and mood to mood. rather than worry about so sorting music, i'd say we should listen to as much as we can and love the great songs by consistent serious artists (sinatra, beatles, stones, clash, marley, simon, franco, spanish harlem orchestra) and the one or two hit wonders.

if i've talked past you, it like the typos, is in part attributable to naomi wolf

[Corvus9]

i'd mark the beginning of this conversation at your comment above about the beatles being supreme and others being merely dimissible

We are definitely talking past each other. If you think I dismiss the contributions of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, or the Beach Boys, you must think I'm smoking crack. I could try explaining how I was not dismissing them, but really, there is no point. I give up. It's a lost cause.

However, I will continue to make broad assertions as to the superiority or inferiority of certain musical artists in various threads. Just to piss you guys off.

[Corvus9]

Fuck! I can't let it go! Fuck!

Ok, this point:

i hear an amped-up pop song that lacks the underlying toughness and interlocking riffs and bottom of street fighting man or stray cat blues. now is that because one form is a pop song and one is a rock song or because we haven't agreed on the parameters of the form?

I think this gets to the point about how each piece of art creates it's own aesthetics. Of those original comparisons I made, the one I felt was shakiest was the Stones one. Setting aside whether Helter Skelter is rock or pop or whatever, as a general rule, the Stones were "tougher and tighter" than the Beatles. Which means that their songs tend to exist in an aesthetic universe (a universe comprise solely of that one song) that values tightness and toughness. But The Beatles didn't really seem to value or accentuate tightness or toughness in the same way the Stones did. John and Ringo were much more relaxed players than Keith and Charlie (I think Watts and Ringo were equally good drummers, though I personally prefer Ringo, but Keith was clearly a superior rhythm guitarist to John, being quite possibly the best ever.). So Beatles songs tend to not exist in an aesthetic universe that values tightness and toughness. There are other things that they are concerned with relaying, and often things that tightness and toughness would fight against. Try to imagine, say, I'm Only Sleeping with Charlie playing the drum part. Not really optimal, is it?

[Corvus9]

This probably going to be bothering me in bits and pieces all though the night, so I am going to just keep posting comments as they occur to me.

I do not believe that Lennon or McCartney would ever be in favor of dissing Chuck Berry or Little Richard.

I didn't fucking dis Chuck Berry and Little Richard! Chuck Berry invented rock n' roll! Little Richard helped, and had one of the greatest voices in the genre! I just don't think they are as good as the Beatles, and I don't think Chuck Berry is a lyricist on par with them. Chuck and Rick were giants, but the Beatles were just more gianter, that's all. I mean, I too doubt that Lennon would favor dissing Chuck Berry. But do you really think he didn't think he was a better artist?

[big bad wolf]

but i think that's my point corvus: that setting the parameters is not objective, or to the extent that the parameters are set out through definitions arrived at through discussion and negotiation they are "objective" only because the people holding the discussion agree to treat that set of definitions as defining objective criteria. that is, the agreed-upon definitions (assuming we ever get that far:) don't correlate to any separately existing objective "good" or aesthetic, they create one. the creation may be consensual and we may agree on the use of that consensual creation, but it cannot, i think, be used to "prove" any precise order or superiority among bands already at a high level of craft; it can only yield a result consistent with the values embodied in the definitions, and those values are subjective and, if not time-bound, affected by their time. so, the beatles could be "better" under one definition, and not better under a different, but equally thoughtful and equally negotiated, definition that embodies somewhat different values.

i'm not pissed off. i like your enthusiasm for music. i like that you stand up for what you like and what you think is good and great. i like that you love the beatles so much. i just don't think you can prove their superiority, as opposed to joyously proclaim and believe it. nothing wrong with that, but i'm always going to come back and say you can't prove it and don't worry about trying, just search out and listen to good stuff. peace.

[Corvus9]

even lesser clash songs like straight to hell are far deeper and more mature worldly political songs than anything john lennon ever put forth. so the clash must outrank the beatles, if that is the metric.

This is another good view of a mistaken view of aesthetics. The metric of what makes a song good is not some outside metric imposed upon it. Lennon often wasn't trying to write mature worldly political songs. He was often trying to write idealistic at times almost willfully naive political songs ("Imagine," "All You Need is Love") but even that is a different thing. Judging his songs by whether or not they are worldly and mature political is nothing more than the enforcement of personal preference as a standard. And thus folly in terms of trying to judge art.

And is "Working Class Hero" really less mature than "Guns of Brixton"?

[Corvus9]

far too many of the criteria that you would rely on at that level are too subjective. what constitutes depth or balance, and how do we define form---beyond say a pop song or a rock song, and even that has subjective parameters.

Depth and balance were incredibly vague terms that I settled upon that only barely hint at what I was trying to get at, and are very hard to explain. I think I see depth as relating to meaning, or the importance of what an artwork is about. The more meaning, the deeper the meaning, the better. And that applies to any way an artwork conveys meaning. And more depth is better than less depth. King Lear is deep. Desolation Row is deep. The Mona Lisa is deep. And then balance relates to the way the artwork conveys meaning, which often is almost inextricably tied to the meaning conveyed, but balance just means that nothing in the conveyance of the meaning is out of place. Hence Nabokov, who for novelists who aren't Joyce is probably the master of balance. Every word is just so with him. And thus, because content is so tied to form, there is still meaning in Nabokov, but it is somewhat superficial in comparison to someone like Faulkner, who, while also having a great sense of balance, thought doesn't seemed to have considered each and every word, often often plumbs deeper wells of experience than Nabokov.

Maybe a different way of saying it is there is what an artwork tells you, and how it tells you it. You can't produce great art without saying something, and you can't produce great art without saying it well. Both are important, and the masters (of whatever media) do both.

[Corvus9]

setting the parameters is not objective, or to the extent that the parameters are set out through definitions arrived at through discussion and negotiation they are "objective" only because the people holding the discussion agree to treat that set of definitions as defining objective criteria.

Whatever parameters exist for judging an artwork come from the artwork itself, not from an external source. Because each artwork is different, there can be no "set of definitions" that "defines objective criteria." The point you seem to be disagreeing with is not one I am trying to make.

Jesus, this is hard to talk about. It a conversation taking place several levels above abstraction.

[Corvus9]

i like that you stand up for what you like and what you think is good and great. i like that you love the beatles so much. i just don't think you can prove their superiority, as opposed to joyously proclaim and believe it.

You know, this really has very little to do with the Beatles. I am not arguing this because they are my favorite band. In fact, I probably listen to Clutch more often. I had really just thought it was settled fact that there was no music band on equal artistic footing with the Beatles, just based on observing the culture and the way people all over the world respond to them. I mean, if you think there is a band that is better than them, like the Stones (who is probably number two on any such list, although who knows, maybe the Funk Brothers should actually be higher), I would actually like to hear that. However, it might actually be more fruitful to try to determine whether, say, Strawberry Fields Forever or Sympathy for the Devil is the better song. Or Stairway to Heaven or This Land is Your Land or Like A Rolling Stone, I don't know.

How about this? Clutch is better than Sleater-Kinney. That should piss somebody off.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Zeesh, I try to discuss dull, boring, old sex on Sara's thread, and all the cool kids come here to talk music. Oh well.

As for lists in general, I find them fun and useful if you don't attempt to take them seriously. I don't agree that, if you can say Shakespeare > Brown, which is obvious on almost any criteria, that later, narrower, divisions can be as objective. Different people get different things out of works of art, music, fiction consider dofferent factors more important to overall enjoyment. So two groups that might be 'objectively' equal in quality can be ranked entirely different.

But the Beatles are different. They belong in a very special category, along with -- to stick with popular arts -- Conan Doyle, John Campbell and his staff of writers (Heinlein, Sturgeon, Asimov), Gene Rodenberry, Gilbert & Sullivan, even Babe Ruth. All of whose accomplishments were great, but whose importance in changing and maturing their field -- to the point that, once they had existed there was no going back, no abandoning their influence -- so overshadows even their accomplishments that they just can't be measured by the same yardstick you would judge anyone else in their field.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

After them, it would be an interesting list, and would probably say a bit about how people hear music, and also about personal experiences we've had with the music that colored our view of it. For example, while I'd argue objectively that the "Greatest Rock and Roll band" was The WHO, I know that my feeling is affected by the memory of seeing them at their best, in Centrsl Park on a warm summer night im August 1968, outdoors at a concert starting at 11:00 P.M. and which cost $1.50 -- and you even could talk with the group. (I was so turned on that my flip-flops had been ripped off my feet in the crowd, and even though I even went into the subway, I knew I had to burn off the energy byy walking, barefooted, along Broadway at 2:00 AM from 72nd to 112th St.)