I woke up alone this morning, so I click onto a favorite litblog Maudnewton.com, and read about the Bulwer-Lytton winner of the worst first sentence of an imaginary novel. Which sends me hurtling to google the site itself, where I read the winning entries, as well as past winners.
Two samples:
"The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarous tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong, clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, "Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last meal." (1984 Winner)
"The countdown had stalled at T minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably--the first of many such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my career." (1985 Winner)
Then I click on the NY Times, where an article about film director Sergio Leone gets me to thinking that his movies are some of my all-time favorites, although I'd never have thought of putting him on any Great Directors List. So I wonder why not, and I think about old Sergio's particular greatnesses — those grungy face closeups half-blotting out vast sun-drenched landscapes, the slowing-down of climactic time in the final shootouts, the brilliance of casting the most original film composer, Morricone, and the most charismatic leading man, laconic Clint Eastwood, with the amazing Lee Van Cleef — and I google old Sergio, and then I think of my favorite director, Ingmar Bergman, and his favorite film of mine, Persona, and then I think, hey, what are the absolute touchstones of art in my life? and now I'm about to list them right here, because I'm thinking of them now: Matisse, Bergman, George Elliot's Middlemarch, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Pink Floyd's early instrumental albums ...
Article comments
1 - adam
Why didn't the Amazon book come up in the post when I popped in ISBN: 1417942479?
2 - Bob A. Booey
HELL no, it's not better than sex :)
But I agree that Internet search engines and Google especially have made a whole world of information available to us that would have amazed even the most dedicated scholars from previous centuries. Google has a lot of interesting plans they've already started on, including digitally scanning the entire contents of America's great university libraries so people can search within academic texts and classic works from anywhere in the world. It would literally be possible for someone who were so inclined to pursue a quality education from their home and technological advances may make it possible to offer a true symposium among different colleges. I took part in a seminar linking my university to one in Australia as an undergrad and we had some great e-mail list exchanges, but there wasn't any real use of cross-cultural texts, research, or even video-conferencing technology. I think a class linking students from across the globe will soon be very common and much more fruitful than it was a few years ago.
Adam: you are a real intellectual and very literate. Your taste in literature, film, and especially criticism is commendable. The one area where you're out of touch is pop music -- your tastes there are significantly more trite and uninspired.
Nonetheless, I hope you'll write more often and do cultural criticism/film reviews. I'd enjoy reading them.
That is all.
3 - Lisa McKay
Because you put in ISBN: 1417942479. All you should put in is the number itself. If there is more than one item, you separate the items with commas. No spaces, no quotes. All fixed now!
4 - adam
Lisa, thanks!
Bob A. Booey,
I don't think there's anything trite about Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. The peaks of pop music are pretty much established -- Elvis, the Beatles, Dylan, the Stones, Hendrix, Prince -- trite as they might be, but if you want some other stuff, hey, I'll throw in Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, Klaus Schultz, Pink Floyd's early instrumental albums, Kraftwerk, a Jeff Beck album, Brian Eno. Who else are you thinking of?
5 - Bob A. Booey
This is what I mean ... otherwise smart, educated guys who live all up in their head like soul-less, technical music. How is it possible for you to be so discerning in books and film but not when it comes to rock and roll? I think a big part of it is that good rock n roll isn't about technical merit or artistic refinement so much as authentic expressions of human emotion and simple, catchy melodies.
The only decent bands you listed in that group are Kraftwerk and maybe Eno (if you don't mind falling asleep to music). Pink Floyd is an abomination, a crime against humanity. I guess Van Morrison's alright with me, but The Eagles? Simon & Garfunkel?
I've had the Dylan debate countless times on this site, so I'll spare everyone. Unlike with Styx, my objection to him is largely socio-cultural simply because people associate so much political and cultural meaning that just isn't there with Dylan, something he probably cultivates with his poetic-hippie Everyman lyrics and changing image.
I'll just offer this little quote about our favorite faux artist-troubador for now:
"Apart from certain obvious exceptions at either end of the spectrum of commodification (represented, say, by the MC-5 at one end and the Monkees at the other) it was and remains difficult to distinguish precisely between authentic counterculture and fake: by almost every account, the counter-culture, as a mass movement distinct from the bohemias that preceded it, was triggered at least as much by developments in mass culture (particularly the arrival of The Beatles in 1964) as changes at the grass roots. Its heroes were rock stars and celebrities, millionaire performers and employees of the culture industry; its greatest moments occurred on television, on the radio, at rock concerts, and in movies. From a distance of thirty years, its language and music seem anything but the authentic populist culture they yearned so desperately to be: from contrived cursing to saintly communalism to the embarrassingly faked Woody Guthrie accents of Bob Dylan and to the astoundingly pretentious works of groups like Iron Butterfly and The Doors, the relics of the counterculture reek of affectation and phoniness, the leisure-dreams of white suburban children like those who made up so much of the Grateful Dead's audience throughout the 1970s and 1980s."
-- Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, 1997, p. 8 (U. Chicago Press)
6 - Temple Stark
Adam, Be proud, you're one of the best and a Blogcritics editors' pick. Go to this link here to finds out why.
Thank you.
7 - Allen
What? Pink Floyd is an abomination, a crime against humanity??
Ha ha ha ha ha!! What a twatt you're my friend.
8 - Franck
Bob A. Booey, i find your level of music and intelect pathetic for someone who talks about "intelligence".