[contextly_auto_sidebar id="pSiNhPLxRicBfP3m18tXkhFjYiIy7Uxc"] THE other day I almost froze as I heard a song coming out of the radio that sounded both fresh and eerily familiar. It turned out to be a song from the new Elliott Smith tribute by Seth Avett -- guitarist for the rustic, North Carolina-based Avett Brothers -- and the indie singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield. The song -- … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2015
Guest Columnist: Has Our Inner Child Won?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ZZ6HZnil37V095gDDTpaRNbulixzlHOn"] Here's the latest from our sometime guest columnist. This one will make some noise, I expect. With no further ado: WHAT PRICE SAFETY? By Lawrence Christon A mad, obsessive ship’s captain destroys everyone on board, save one, in his vengeful mission to kill a whale. An unhinged barber slits the throats of his patrons and … [Read more...]
What Makes a City Beautiful ?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="krjjjXo4RZIvrWEAQUieiD1G6Y9vbRUb"] IT'S all just a matter of opinion, isn't it? Nobody can agree on aesthetics, right? The Anglo-Swiss writer Alain de Botton demolishes these myths and others in a video on "How to Make an Attractive City." Slate has a fascinating story on the topic, and breaks out the writer's six criteria for urban beauty. By the part that … [Read more...]
The Horatio Alger Myth: Amanda Palmer
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="81zgKnkFndNWR6ZZyt0SEf1pDSPSHyWh"] DO musicians and artists need an equitable structure around them, or can they make it by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps? The latter point of view has been promoted -- perhaps incessantly -- by onetime Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer, a talented musician and canny businesswoman who has become a Horatio Alger hero for the … [Read more...]
“In Praise of Difficulty”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="b8rJJnGCXKiH3M8zWOVGbX2BXfYXXJBs"] DO we need cultural seriousness, intellectual contemplation, works of depth and complexity? I've been hearing for most of my life -- I came of age in the '80s -- that we don't. Just asking the question got you branded, when I was a kid, a sissy or a bookworm; now it gets you called a snob. But a very fine, reasonably long … [Read more...]
Dueling With the Dean: Rock Crit Robert Christgau
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="yBD4c5vb8BM1hc18kDjMHHcBiA2hrCio"] ON the occasion of his new memoir, Going Into the City, which chronicles the roots of a rock critic and in some ways an entire generation of American pop-culture journalists, I spoke to Christgau about childhood, politics, fellow scribe Ellen Willis, pop, and the lost promise of the '60s. He's the author of immortal line, in his … [Read more...]
Does Quality Exist? Does it Matter?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="wQDbiK53WLrcRyDIHLNO7bs9fTuwmnMY"] THE novelist Rick Moody tracked me down recently and asked me to go back and forth with him over the issue of aesthetic quality. He -- as an emissary of the literary blog The Rumpus -- was especially interested in the notion of art that was "born to be bad." We chewed on this issue for a while -- connecting the argument of my … [Read more...]
Six Questions: Where Do We Go Fom Here?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="1whRNQEaMtG6Y3rKjMLHRzTEwdTzdym6"] THE American Scholar magazine recently asked me to lay out some of the questions I was left with upon completing my book, Culture Crash. I was glad they asked me for questions rather than answers; the plight of the arts, humanism, the middle class, and art for art's sake seem so complex and impacted that it's a lot harder to solve … [Read more...]
Pop Songs and the Novel: Against Vanguardism
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="a7mJx7Xejr8thGfyDNDHndexoDBA5XUC"] THE writer and critic Nick Hornby, who has a new novel out, wrote this a few years back in discussing the songs of Ben Folds: There is an argument that says pop music, like the novel, has found its ideal form, and in the case of pop music it’s the three- or four-minute verse/chorus/verse song. And if this is the case, then we … [Read more...]