Harry Smith, from Early abstractions, 1941-57, film still
“ Why do I object so viscerally to Two Lights and their ilk’s expenditure? Is it the crassness of their sense of entitlement? The fact that their music is such generic, mediocre piffle? Perhaps if you don’t have everything paid for already you have to work that much harder in order to pay your rent and make a success of it, and as a result of working harder you simply become better at your art.
Nick Southall, On selling out and privilege in music
“ Bayley loaded the map into a computerized laser-cutting program. An hour later, he had this beautiful 50-piece Baltic birch plywood puzzle. It’s fitting to make a toy out of the ward map, Bayley believes, because the aldermen who designed it treated the city like a toy.
Architecture Student Turns Ward Map Into Jigsaw Puzzle | NBC Chicago (via ourmaninchicago)
This is awesome! Me want.
Donating to the Best Music Writing series is the functional equivalent of pre-ordering the 2012 edition of the book—which will collect 2011’s best pieces of criticism, reportage, and other media on music from publications of all types and from all corners of the globe. Why not do so today?
I donated yesterday. What are y’all waiting for? Only five days left!
“ it should be called h+1+n+1 because this shit is worse than bird flu amirite
One of ILM’s pseudonymous posters on that n+1 piece about Pitchfork.
I read ILM threads for the comedy and am rarely disappointed. But this seems like the most astute response to the article as well.
“ The deadness of Hirst’s product lines—flipping the bird to anyone who naively craves more and better from art—upsets a lot of people. I deem their ire misdirected. Don’t shoot the messenger. Hirst honestly vivifies a situation in which the power of money celebrates itself by shedding all pretext of supporting illiquid values.
Peter Schjeldahl smacks Damien Hirst (and his devotees and detractors) upside the head
As always, Schjeldahl states in elegant prose my scattered, inarticulate feelings about a visual artist. In this case Damien Hirst who, as the critic points out, isn’t interesting enough to get offended or self-righteous (see: David Hockney, oh the irony!) about and is guilty only of accepting the market’s obscene terms. If he didn’t, someone else would. Carry on, and let art eat itself.
Reading Schjeldahl’s column, it occurred to me that his position on Hirst is closely related to why I can’t be arsed to care one way or the other about Lana Del Rey. (And it would be easy to connect dots between, say, the deadness of Hirst and the blankness of LDR.) Aside from her SNL performance (awful and honestly called by ordinary folk living in blissful ignorance of purported metanarratives), Lana Del Rey—her music, her persona, her provocations—doesn’t merit outrage because she doesn’t merit notice. She’s the indie pop star the online hype-machine-as-celebration-of-hype demands and deserves. But it’s not like she invented the machine or anything. Carry on, and let, well … you know.
Notes: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Alison Weir
It’s probably not a good idea to approach a book of medieval history with high entertainment expectations. Life in twelfth-century Europe? A grim, relentless grind of war, disease, famine (or food so bad famine’s almost preferable) and unquestioning obedience to God, king, overlord, husband—even for the Queen of England and duchess of what constitutes most of modern-day France.
So my attitude going into Eleanor of Aquitaine—dread, fortified by strong coffee—was just about right. And wouldn’t you know? The book turned out to be kind of a page-turner. Though textually dense, it’s under 400 pages (sans notes and sources) and pretty good about relating the known facts about a medieval woman circumventing some pretty formidable cultural obstacles to shape the history of the continent in a nice, tight narrative.
Alison Weir didn’t have a lot of direct source material to work with. At that time, queens mattered for 1) their dowries, 2) their dynastic connections, and 3) their baby yields (Eleanor had nine children who survived infancy), and her name appeared on documents only when she was acting as regent for her invasion-happy husband, Richard II. So Weir primarily relies on contemporary accounts by sometimes-petty, often gossipy, intermittently reliable monks and priests—the only literate members of this society. She’s left to do some speculation and creative storytelling, which works for me. I’d just as soon not read the minutiae of military campaigns and royal rulings.
Medieval history isn’t really my thing; I’m more of an early American gal. And while 18th century America may be another country, the things it cares about—individual liberty and self determination, reason, natural rights, etc.—are more or less the same things Westerners care about now. Twelfth century Europe, on the other hand, is another planet, a berserk intermediate zone between hell and purgatory with scant regard for human life and nothing resembling our current conception of justice. (It’s easy to see why this period is a favorite of fantasy and sci-fi writers.) Its ruling classes, including Eleanor’s two husbands and various crowned sons (and occasionally, her) vacillate between unchecked abuse of power—murder, plunder, ruinous taxation—and the donning of hair shirts. This was the age of the Crusades, and Eleanor was famous for accompanying her first husband, Louis VII to the Holy Land. A lot of the West’s current hypocrisies and hysterias concerning Muslims started here (remember when George W. inserted “crusade” into a post-9/11 speech?). And then, as now, the conflict is as rooted in limited land and resources as much as a surfeit of religious feeling.
This was my second run at this book. I set Eleanor aside after some 40 pages a couple years ago because … who knows, the siren song of some message board or crime novel or sitcom? So once again, score! for book challenges.
Porcelain Raft - Backwords (2012)
Overnight, this became my favorite song and this my favorite album of the still very young year. Probably more in aura (but also lyrically—English isn’t Mauro Remiddi’s first language either), Backwards reminds me of late, post-divorce ABBA. Swirling synthetic gimcrackery buffs regret and some basic chords to a romantic pop glassine. But it’s the singer’s earned maturity that catches in your throat. When he imagines his ex in a hotel room with her new beau, they’re playing cards. He knows—and you know—that nothing could be more intimate.
Gosh this new Cloud Nothings album is crazy catchy, innit?
“ Mothers fretting over the sexual precocity of their sons can just sit back and relax. Yes, sure, Flanagan urges the parents of girls to make their daughters’ bedrooms “Internet-free” zones (so they can feel safe from the hostile world and develop their identities in private) and to make sure there’s a strong male in the house (to scare off boys with bad intentions). But the parents of boys should presumably feel free to fire up a doobie and watch Californication on cable.
Heather Havrilesky reviewing Caitlin Flanagan’s Girl land
“The thing that [Jennifer] Egan does that no other American writer I can think of pulls off, is to be formally daring without being even a little bit pretentious. She takes her stories in crazy twists down wild alleys, without ever let the book turn into a writing workshop experiment. Whenever I read something that is labeled “formally daring”, on each page I can feel the criticisms from the other graduate students shaping the story, I can feel information being withheld so the author won’t be accused of being pedantic by his fellow Yaddo inmates. And in the end every one of those damn books I read - from Michael Chabon to Josh Ferris - feels to me like it was written with an audience of grad students in mind rather than people who just want to enjoy a story and don’t need it pointing out to you every page how clever it is. The inventiveness of Egan never feels forced or show offy, but always like an author searching for what is the best possible way to express something about a character, with a mind that is nimble enough to range freely trying to answer that question.”Richard Rushfield makes a very good point about Jennifer Egan, who I agree is probably the finest literary novelist working today. This point is really crucial for most all writing — I think it’s very important for writing to engage with a wider audience rather than to self-consciously aim to please a small coterie of critics and acquaintances. (via perpetua)
This is such a great point. I just finished Stone Arabia, which is GREAT btw, but I had similar thoughts — “OK, this pushes my buttons just so, but would I recommend it to anyone not already invested in the sort of New Yorker aesthetic at play here? No wonder my mom, who reads way more books than I do, mocked herself and said she stays away from National Book Award stuff because it’s over her head!”)
Except the part about being pretentious (it’s true, she’s not), I couldn’t disagree more. Goon Squad is lousier with gimmicks and show-offy devices than any work of recent fiction I can think of. And behind the smoke and mirrors there’s very little story, as I’ve previously said in a much wordier way. (However, I like The Keep, which doesn’t seem to try so damn hard, and would recommend it to anyone.)
Goon Squad seems to divide people on issues of taste more than questions about Egan’s ability. I happen to prefer stuff like subtlety and understatement in fiction and rarely respond to dazzle and acrobatics. And I can’t stand certain subjects—psychologically damaged young women trying to make their way in a glamorous field (music, publishing, etc), for one. Other people enjoy those things, which is fine. But it strikes me as silly to posit Egan as some kind of populist hero. And you totally undermine your argument by claiming Michael Chabon and Joshua Ferris as stuffy academicians!
The only short stories in the New Yorker I ever read are the ones with Alice Munro’s name on them, and I totally agree that writing workshops have had a stultifying effect on fiction. But Goon Squad’s no more readable than your typical Iowa grad’s novel. And maybe it’s just me, but Egan’s book—in its subjects, in its mores—seems slightly dated. Reading it, I couldn’t shake that 80s feeling.
“ Many photos on Tumblr are not even credited, because to digital image collectors it simply doesn’t matter where the pictures of crumbling buildings and heart-shaped pastries and brightly colored sneakers are from, or what material reality they document. On Tumblr they become communal property, emblematic of subcultural affiliations, aesthetic orientations, social locations, and ideological dispositions.
Meagan Day, On tumblr
Or many tumblr users are simply too lazy or intellectually incurious to credit images to their creators. This is theoretical excusifying for what is essentially dick behavior.
