A spam email from The Nation:
In an effort to illuminate the importance of literary and cultural matters of the moment, TheNation.com has just launched a new fortnightly column.
The Short of It will be the home of riffs, rants, raves, obituaries, reportage, appreciations, light essays, character sketches, vignettes and digressions. The inspiration is the urban sketch found on the back pages of daily journals and magazines in the nineteenth century.
The debut piece by Barry Schwabsky explores the new New Museum--the building, the opening show, the bookstore and more. Coming up are pieces about the music playlist of Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll; a rave about the jazz musician Albert Ayler; an appreciation of Doc Humes, novelist, beat, and old Paris Review hand; a lament about the decline of academic lit crit and a rant about mandarins who lament the supposed decline of reading.
Bullshit is the ultimate unstoppable vampire monster that will kill us all.
Oh, and:
There are no "literary or cultural matters of the moment" that are of "importance." Fiction died with Steinbeck. Photography killed painting; TV killed photography. Elvis and Chuck Berry and Howlin' Wolf killed jazz, and thank God for that. Poetry never mattered.
There is more meaning in one Paul Verhoeven film than in the global history of "digressions."
Death to pretension!
What, not a Jazz listener?
ReplyDeleteAnd Paul Verhoeven _has_ actually made some good movies- at least they are enjoyable on a meta-level :D
Here here!
ReplyDeleteI believe you have lost your mind.
ReplyDeletePaul Verhoeven is, in all seriousness, a great director. I love Starship Troopers, Robocop, Basic Instinct and, most recently, Blackbook. That last one is amazing.
ReplyDeleteted, i have to say, i agree with you 99% of the time, but:
ReplyDelete"Poetry never mattered"...???
sorry man, but you're full of shit.
I listened to Janeane Garafolo (sp) and tried 'The Nation' for a month. What a waste of paper. There was a five-page love letter to some obscure jazz musician in the middle of each issue, and the rest was just whiny noise. Heck, I got more political insight from that crazy Matt Taibbi who writes for Rolling Stone in one issue than I did in four issues of the Nation.
ReplyDeleteJeez, no one pick up a pencil, saxophone, or camera again...Ted declares "culture" dead!!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, in today's world, this is worthy of a rant? And if you don't like jazz, fine...but why the need to denigrate us that do?
"Fiction died with Steinbeck."
ReplyDeleteRead some Rushdie.
"Photography killed painting"
Monet did his best work at the end of the 19th century; photography had been around for some time already. Picasso, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns? After photography was around more than a wee bit.
"TV killed photography."
Apples and oranges mate, TV killed films, films killed theater. You're not very good at this.
" Elvis and Chuck Berry and Howlin' Wolf killed jazz,"
Except they didn't, because Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman continued.
"and thank God for that. "
Spoken like a craven man incapable of appreciating Earl Hines or Count Basie. Or Cab f'ing Calloway.
"Poetry never mattered."
If you've ever once in your life said "the best laid plans of mice and men", then you're proven wrong.
Seriously, Mr Rall, I have NEVER read anything you've written be this moronic, poorly thought out, or craven.
You've lost any credibility in my eyes for your continued rants on society. You really don't understand. It's sad.
YES! Someone else who gets STARSHIP TROOPERS! And BLACK BOOK is indeed amazing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting me know I'm not alone on this!
I dunno about the proposition here. Isn't the real truth that there are just too many damned people to have any consensus? We live in a country where 30% of people still think W is a "good" "president". I mean, yeah, it's illusion to think art exists in some rarefied air and it changes lives. But, I can also say there are some really great works of poetry and fiction that matter to some amount of people.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'd submit it's BS nostalgia to think Steinbeck mattered unilaterally. He mattered to some people in some ways. Others read penny dreadfuls, random scifi, trash romance, and more.
im in the "strongly agree with Ted" camp on this one..
ReplyDeleteOh I get it! This is a parody of the fluffy crap you anticipate cropping up on the Nation's back pages
ReplyDeleteTed,
ReplyDeleteStop destroying what little hope graduate students in the humanities have left to experience a world outside their increasingly defunded academic departments!!!!
I like the 'death to pretension' call, nice touch. A few comments on this subject:
I, too got the free trial of The Nation and found it to be an utter waste of paper.
Anyone here who has not seen the movie "Who in the *&%@! is Jackson Pollack," should do so. The inspirational world of value is an economy of worth (Boltanski & Thevenot) that packages just about anything into a message for consumption by those who can't find something else on which to spend their excess wealth.
Those who are not burdened with excess wealth create their own wealth. So a $50 million Jackson Pollack would not liven up the decor of my living room as a material object any more than the antique trumpet (worth $20) or my first guitar -complete with the names of college drinking buddies carved into it (worth nothing to anyone but me). Were I to become a famous musician, I'm sure that guitar -which isn't even playable- would be the most valuable of the collection.
Scholars of pop culture are, as many fiction writers freely admit of themselves, attempting to find authenticity in the artifacts of other ordinary people who either lived or now live in a specified locale (spacial, temporal, socio-cultural).
In the reporting of said persons, they are also packaging an artifact of humanity they wish to market to others within this economy of worth. However, as with the market for newly manufactured 'collectors items,' or predicting which music of today will be played on "classic" stations 50 years from now, we find we cannot manufacture this value, nor can we predict what other excesses of our existence will be sold on future markets of inspirational value. My guess is that nothing created with the deliberate attempt of being for this purpose will survive the vast dustbin of history, because future generations of humanities students want to live the lives of those who lived, not those who commented on those who lived.
They may never see the irony.
Ted, is this what you are mocking, or am I off the mark?
This is why red state people hate blue state people.
ReplyDeleteLiberals and conservatives exist in every state, and this is far less a liberal/conservative divide than it is a class divide.
ReplyDeleteGetting that out of the way, the hate of which you speak, DRC, is preexisting and transient in the minds of those people who would 'hate,' it is not elicited, nor is it deserved. This is the same hate that can be turned against those of different ethnicities, phenotypes, genders, or anything else. It's the hatred of disenfranchised people who feel they should have some entitlement but don't, and they haven't figured out why they are angry, so that anger gets channeled by anyone who strikes a nerve with them into whatever scapegoat for their disenfranchisement is most readily available: women, young people, minorities, etc.
We are always a hair trigger away from savagery.
Spoken like a craven man incapable of appreciating Earl Hines or Count Basie. Or Cab f'ing Calloway.
ReplyDeleteI never said jazz wasn't good. I said it wasn't relevant. Which it isn't.
Ted, is this what you are mocking, or am I off the mark?
You're not off the mark.
Didn't Wilde point this out like over a hundred years ago? I'm just saying this is a matter of perspective. Art never mattered or maybe it did or maybe it does. I don't think it's empirical nor has it ever been.
ReplyDelete"All art is quite useless." - opening to Dorian Grey
Since you're the arbiter of everything now, why is Jazz not relevant, and what is, oh king of insurmountable ego?
ReplyDeleteTed be da man.
ReplyDeleteSince you're the arbiter of everything now, why is Jazz not relevant, and what is, oh king of insurmountable ego?
ReplyDeleteI'm the arbiter of my own opinion. Others may, and should frequently, disagree. They are the arbiters of their opinions, and we can make brash comments to one another without ethnic cleansing resulting.
Jazz is not a mass market medium, accounting for only about 3 percent of music sales. Classical, which is pretty irrelevant too, is about 12 percent.
What's relevant? Rock, hip hop, and R&B. I hate R&B, by the way. Relevant doesn't always equal good.
Ok AD, next time I'll use an emoticon so you'll know its a joke.
ReplyDelete; )
There, I hope that helps.
ag:
ReplyDeletep.s.,
Thanks for the lecture.
Well, thanks for the Obama Reconcilliation council. utube Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain,
ReplyDeleteBenny Golson's Along Came Betty, Horace Silver's Peace.
Hey: different strokes.
Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL, Kevin Smith's DOGMA, Tarkovsky's ANDREI RUBLEV not relevant? Not not.
The Nation got hit with the new jacked-up Time Warner-coerced postal rates (used to kill off all the "independent" magazines, while Time/Newsweek etc. got their rates lowered by the USPostOffice - brought to you by Disney -) so maybe they're just trying to appeal to the people that are now lining their kitchen cabinets with the New New New New Yorker.
Fiction: check out Denis Johnson - "Angels"- ;Tillie Olsen's "Tell Me a Riddle", Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"
Poetry: Dylan Thomas' "The Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, of a Child in London". Psalms, bubbie. Where else are the interior wisdoms to be found "in plain sight" for those with eyes to see and ears to hear?
painting: check out Guernica again - Picasso's response to the Nazi's "Shock & Awe" bombing.
"Shock & Awe" our new "Shuck 'n' Jive". Relevant as an expletive so strong it hasn't been coined yet because the old curses don't have enough power to pierce the present so-called Reality.
photography: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - relevant. To me. Family of Man.
anti-pretention - fine - anti music? Naw. You're just too heartbroken by the real deal, the imprimaturs of Oprah and before her Billy Graham.
Soothing the savage beast raving within us all here gathered watching the destruction of all we hold precious, the criminal hypocrisy we may all convict ourselves of - hating our own complicity in the Starbucks Nation.
music? The Mozart Requiem, maybe, to grieve the death of democracy. The Faure Requiem to console us as we rage/weep, "Rough Side of the Mountain" and "Roumania, Roumania" to get us dancing, and Shirley Horn to help us listen.
Anger turned outward agression
Anger turned inward depression
Anger turned sideways HUMOR
onward & excelsior, Ted!!!!!!
quality not quantity ; "relevance" is so individual: what is the poultice you use to strengthen you?
DRC & Aggie Dude;
ReplyDeleteDon't forget, and as many posters on this site prove, that dangerous hatred cuts both ways. Or is it okay for one group to hate another if it happens to be the group to which you belong?
Just curious,
A
If it amounts to 12 % of sales, I'd say classical is pretty damn relevant, also to the developement of modern music.
ReplyDeleteAnd hip-hop? They used to call it 'stuttering' and it could be cured.
I'd say that new pop/country is a prime example of something that is 'relevant' today but utterly atrocious in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteWithin the context of discussing relevance of cultural artifacts, Ted, I'd like to add (and suggest) that I think the digital age makes many things less relevant. Technology has gotten to the point where people have access to enormous variety. Not just of media, but access to distinct foods, connection to those speaking different languages, etc.
A good example is a newer neighborhood of houses that are all very idiosyncratic and unique, vs. older neighborhoods where all the houses are clearly a rotating pattern of 3 or 4 designs. The extreme of this is in Europe where villages are very homogeneous by design.
'relevance' means something that provides a shared reality amongst a large swath of different people, right? The Beatles were relevant.
Society is becoming increasingly difficult to manage because we all live in different worlds and are not connected by shared experience, even within the same neighborhood.
Any power base that exists now seems to do so through the suppression of uniqueness, not the celebration of it.
Hey Ted, next time you're in San Diego, cruz over to my house and we'll listen to some country (hehehe).....and maybe we can add some drunken verses to Irish drinking songs (maybe an argument against poetry not mattering)?
ReplyDeleteawesome.
Yep. Country/pop is crap (imho), but there are some genuine Country singers still out there (Brad Paisley comes most readily to mind). They may be inoffensive (whatever that means) and either conservative/apolitical in musical outlook, but they're still MUCh preferable to the army of AMERICAN IDLE-ers invading the genre right now.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I used a different spelling there on purpose.
Best to all!
A
Boring topic
ReplyDeleteTed,
ReplyDeleteShut the fuck up about the relevance of jazz. You're a an ignoramus that couldn't even being to understand nor appreciate the art form. If you do, then simply explain this to me:
What was Ornette Coleman's main contribution to jazz, and what is its historical importance?
(I'll know if your answer is credible or some b.s. you copy from Wikipedia).
If you can't answer, then you don't have any claims to make about jazz. Sales (are people buying?) and subjective taste (is it good?) have nothing to do with an art form's relevance.
Stick to what you know jackass.
Okay then. What DOES determine an "art" form's relevance?
ReplyDeleteSeems a fair question after your ill mannered, insulting post.
Bet your answer has smething to do with sujective taste...
I think Ted and Anon 2:18 PM need to have a hug!....sorry, maybe that's the next post.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, Jazz was extremely relevant in the 1970s and 1980s in Soviet Eastern Europe. It's what kids listened to as a soft form of protest, the way that punk kids in the US and Britain were doing.
That's what Ted means by relevance I think, getting mad at him for his statement about Jazz is missing the point, regardless of how many people buy Jazz or even listen to Jazz. It is not currently a cultural artifact tied to deep social changes, it's just music.
It's like saying the 1968 super bowl was relevant but this years isn't, regardless of the Pats 16-0 or the number of viewers.
Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but I get annoyed with peoples' intransigence to 'getting a clue.'
Hell hath no fury as a fan scorned! Why do people get so pissy when someone insults their favorite band or author or whatever?
ReplyDeleteHere, go ahead, insult my favorite directors: Billy Wilder, Paul Verhoeven, Richard Linklater. Say bad things about my favorite musical genres: punk, New Wave, electroclash, synthpop. Diss my favorite bands: the Dead Kennedys, Clash, Ramones, J Church, Cinerama.
I DON'T CARE. I like what I like, hate what I hate, and I say so and expect other people to do the same. "Ill-mannered," indeed. Who comes to the Rallblog for mannered discussion?
Jazz bores me. Lots of people I respect like jazz, so there's obviously something to it, but I personally don't care about it enough to hate it. So sue me. It's not like I'm going to round up jazz fans and send them to camps, you know?
Aggie Dude wrote:
That's what Ted means by relevance I think, getting mad at him for his statement about Jazz is missing the point, regardless of how many people buy Jazz or even listen to Jazz. It is not currently a cultural artifact tied to deep social changes, it's just music.
Just so.
For example, I don't listen to much hip hop--but it's clearly relevant.
My beef with The Nation is that nothing they're into--in terms of pop culture or, for that matter, politics--is relevant to most people's lives.
True enough point from Ted there. Who does come here for a mannered discussion? Certainly not me!
ReplyDeleteI made a mistake and am sorry.
And so, as I head out to work and in the spirit of the site:
A merry FUCK YOU to all, and to all a fuck tonight!
It has nothing to do with taste, as I stated earlier. I don't care what you like and what you don't like, nor anyone else. If you (Ted) don't like jazz then say "I don't like jazz". To say it's not relevant requires a deep understanding of the art form, backed up by thousands of hours of listening . If I were to state "political cartoons are not relevant", I would be full of shit. Why? Because I couldn't even name 5 political cartoonists in all history. I don't know the art form, and therefore have absolutely no claim to its relevance. On the other hand, I can say "I don't like political cartoons. They bore me".
ReplyDeleteTo answer the other poster, how is an art form's relevance determined? By those who are qualified to make such determinations, mainly those who are either active participants or deeply knowledgeable about it. Everyone else just "knows what they like and don't like." You want to know the current relevance of jazz? Ask Ornette. Not Ted.
Those are 2 completely separate concepts, and frankly sometimes your shallow comments surprise me Ted. A few other posters have stated this as well.
And if I sound pissed, I am. There's a lot of improvising musicians out there who have worked their asses off, and continued pushing the music forward. They ARE relevant. Just because they aren't selling and Beyonce is (again, that's taste) doesn't mean they're not relevant.
One more thing ...
ReplyDeleteTo your comment "It (jazz) is not currently a cultural artifact tied to deep social changes, it's just music."
That comment is EXACTLY what people like you have no business making assessments about jazz's (or any music's) relevance. If you think that any music's relevance is "tied to deep social changes", you are clueless to the real power and purpose of music. I thank God (and I'm an athiest) that musicians who love music itself continue to push forward despite clownish tastemakers like yourself.
love this thread. I love how Ted gets trashed every time by different crowds. He actually pissed me off once in 1999 when he said something along the lines that the civil rights movement made no impact, and that it was actually white people's fear of marauding hoards that led to real concessions. Turning the other cheek is not really what gets things done, etc. What a prick.
ReplyDeleteOkay, your responce begs the question: How exactly does one determine who is and who is not "qualified" to judge "art" of any kind?
ReplyDeleteAfter all, all art is relative. Anyone who says different is an elitist.
Amazing how much traffic this thread has generated. You people are silly.
ReplyDelete"Genre" is an illusion.
ReplyDeleteWhy get hung up on the relative value of your favorite kind of music? When I first went to Berklee I had some pretty strong music prejudices like the ones we see here. But I knew that music is an essential component of everything. Everything.
By the time I graduated (and after peer-conversations much like one of the threads in these comments), I had concluded that genre doesn't matter. You like what you like; I like what I like. My joy in my music is no greater when I try to prove I'm right.
Once again "a" shows his (or her) ignorance. Your last comment shows you cannot distinguish taste from knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI've already clearly answered your questions in my previous post. I'd tell you to re-read it, but it's apparent you cannot read, nor think.
Nope, pretty sure you're the one who can't understand reason here.
ReplyDeleteI'm not talking about taste OR knowledge. I'm talking about "art." Which is, if we're to be honest here, a complete myth. No such thing.
Nothing's art unless everything is. Once you designate one form of music ("Jazz" say, which I LIKE btw) as "art" and claim that some other form is not (country, polka, speed metal, martial, whatever) then you are in every sense making a subjective judgement based on personal knowledge.
While that judgement may be backed up by "thousands of hours of exposure" (or however you put it), it is STILL a judgement.
Unless, of course, you agree that someone who has spent thousands of hours listening to country et all is just a justified in arguing that there's is as relevant an art form as yours.
If you agree to that last point then we have no basic disagreement.
But you're still a foul-mouthed intolerant jackass.