[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...]
“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...]
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...]
“Love Songs: A Hidden History”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="jmgPWNAcri7qqzMjI9cU8cSfZfom5qHL"] INTERESTED in songs about love and sex going back to ancient fertility rites, through the medieval troubadours and the German art song and into the age of "Tangled Up in Blue," Ziggy Stardust, and bedroom R&B? Then you may want to get your hands on Ted Gioia's new secret history, Love Songs, just out on Oxford University … [Read more...]
The Costs of Disruption
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Xw8ARjhG6mdZqCIxpK59cJwcBfxfFyJo"] WHAT happens when we tear up the past, replace people with bots and culture with content? Those are some of the question on the mind of former New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier in his piece "Among the Disrupted." He begins this way: Amid the bacchanal of disruption, let us pause to honor the disrupted. The streets of … [Read more...]
“In Praise of Gatekeepers”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="7ocf4Du4J7q0MwSCTfQQr9rCt1ruYmRF"] ONE of the subjects that makes the disruption boys' hearts race is the idea that technology will get rid of the gatekeepers -- those record-store clerks and publishing-house editors and journalistic critics who just get in the way of the pure, frictionless working of capitalism. If you own a company -- esp a tech company that feeds … [Read more...]
Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Iwl9o6IO0qS8QhMgMHnnfdwEgtpDwMBi"] ONE of the best books on life in the digital age -- and perhaps the one closest to my own point of view -- is Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. I like it for a host of reasons, among them Carr's elegant style, cool tone, and literary and humanistic sensibility. Among my favorite passages: When … [Read more...]
The New Republic is Not About Politics
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Gjg4drHdDm8TMo6CAVQekqDcci6u6t5u"] FOR a few days now, I've been discussing the ideology of one of the nation's most storied magazines, with friends on both left and right; for many, it's best known as a policy journal. But the reason I am most saddened by the destruction of a great publication by a Silicon Valley coup has nothing to to with politics, no matter how … [Read more...]