For some reason best left to him to explain, Robert Christgau skipped over Anthem of the Sun in his otherwise complete list of Grateful Dead albums he's listened to and rated over the years, starting with their first eponymous Warner Brothers release.
Showing posts with label criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label criticism. Show all posts
October 27, 2018
December 15, 2008
The Back of Me Brogans to Yeh
Bush declares that he's not insulted by Shoe Guy's action, but I don't think he's the decider in this. People will make up their own mind about how insulting Shoe Guy managed to be. For my money he crossed the border into perfect effrontery with the first shoe, and the emphatic second one sealed the deal.
Insult? A+
Insult? A+
January 17, 2008
The Song of Jonah, or, Merit Meets Its Match
You know what glib means. Unquestionably you've been subjected to its uses.
If Jonah Goldberg is a glibertarian, if William Kristol or John Podhoretz can be justly called that, then glibertarians include those who can and do in practice willingly talk just the sort of talk and walk just the sort of walk in public that libertarians recommend we all do for our own good, and make out just fine doing so, if libertarianism can be reduced to the rewarding politics of mining proven reserves of self-interest for a living.
With all of libertarianism's considerable nonsense about the free agency of the political monad of the individual filling their sails, glibertarians, to suit their purposes, uniformly support the selective dismantling of the state on the one hand and, at the same time, while presumably holding the state at an ironic distance with the other hand, but as long as they have the ear of who's in charge of it, publicly encourage the state's most autocratic uses as well. What the hell, it's a career. Say what works and move on up the ladder of success.
Jonah Goldberg has written a much-anticipated book called Liberal Fascism. It was already the fabled thing when first announced what seems like years ago, when the wags first lined up to bray about what turned out to be its long delayed arrival, and much hilarity ensued in the intervening months before publication as various sources took their turns swatting at the inviting piñata of Goldberg's conceit.
All during Liberal Fascism's gestation, Goldberg promised he was really going to bear down this time, to come up with a good one, to redeem in effect the glib in glibertarian by some studious research and solid argument.
Such a promise was never within his power to keep, apparently. Instead, the book is a standing appointment with all that is glib in the rhetoric of glibertarianism, the squaring of the Liberal Fascist circle in the Hitler Smiley Face on its cover the cleverest bit of glib in fact, the rest of it falling to the settled standard of Goldbergian glib familiar from his previously expressed views. I say that with confidence, having never read the book, but merely as a result of having witnessed Goldberg now loosed on the book tour supporting the thing, as in the edited interview with John Stewart found here.
If Jonah Goldberg is a glibertarian, if William Kristol or John Podhoretz can be justly called that, then glibertarians include those who can and do in practice willingly talk just the sort of talk and walk just the sort of walk in public that libertarians recommend we all do for our own good, and make out just fine doing so, if libertarianism can be reduced to the rewarding politics of mining proven reserves of self-interest for a living.
With all of libertarianism's considerable nonsense about the free agency of the political monad of the individual filling their sails, glibertarians, to suit their purposes, uniformly support the selective dismantling of the state on the one hand and, at the same time, while presumably holding the state at an ironic distance with the other hand, but as long as they have the ear of who's in charge of it, publicly encourage the state's most autocratic uses as well. What the hell, it's a career. Say what works and move on up the ladder of success.
Jonah Goldberg has written a much-anticipated book called Liberal Fascism. It was already the fabled thing when first announced what seems like years ago, when the wags first lined up to bray about what turned out to be its long delayed arrival, and much hilarity ensued in the intervening months before publication as various sources took their turns swatting at the inviting piñata of Goldberg's conceit.
All during Liberal Fascism's gestation, Goldberg promised he was really going to bear down this time, to come up with a good one, to redeem in effect the glib in glibertarian by some studious research and solid argument.
Such a promise was never within his power to keep, apparently. Instead, the book is a standing appointment with all that is glib in the rhetoric of glibertarianism, the squaring of the Liberal Fascist circle in the Hitler Smiley Face on its cover the cleverest bit of glib in fact, the rest of it falling to the settled standard of Goldbergian glib familiar from his previously expressed views. I say that with confidence, having never read the book, but merely as a result of having witnessed Goldberg now loosed on the book tour supporting the thing, as in the edited interview with John Stewart found here.
November 29, 2007
Fire-tested Argument
Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the god that answers by fire—he is God."
[…]
Then the fire of the LORD fell, and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The LORD, –he is God, The LORD, –he is God!"
Then Elijah commanded them them, "Seize the prophets of Baal. Don't let anyone get away!" They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there.
You can raise all the intellectual challenges you want about faith and the origins of the universe, but at the end of the day, you have to worship the god who can set you on fire.
We like to think Elijah stood in front of the howling column of heavenly fire, straightened his robes, turned to the crowd and said, "Thus, my opponent's argument falls." Then, he finished the debate in the way that all debates should be finished: by having the losers slaughtered.
— David Wong, The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses, via Scott McLemee's Quick Study
Long ago in rhetoric the "Shut up about that" rule was concieved as an alternative method for effectively striking specific people and groups of people and what they might have to say from the list of those who could continue to argue the given point. Every formal argument has such a rule. Slaughtering the losers does directly ensure that their argument will go unheard in every case, and the "Shut up about that" rule in rhetoric cannot hope to be as utterly terminal as that, however much it hopes to achieve the same end, the silencing. As the volume of nattering coming from those under the injunction of the "Shut up about that" rule reaches its critical peak, the probability of their ending in the Kishon Valley increases as well, sad to say.
The Great American Novel vs. The Death of the Novel, a progress report
Time seems to be running out for the appearance of that hopeful monster, the Great American Novel, which was a project first bruited about in the early decades of the twentieth century and never taken to heart more tenaciously than by Norman Mailer, who died recently without quite realizing his own ambitions in this regard.
I'm sure Mailer was aware that The Executioner's Song is a magnificent book, and that his own high regard for it would be shared unfailingly down the ages by those who read it. And yet in the end he felt he hadn't created the thing, the Great American Novel that every novel writer of his generation had been led to believe was out there to be had.
Well, it was always more of a goal than a destination, The Great American Novel, and it doesn't even come up much anymore, really, even in the context of some wistful plan to throw down everything and devote oneself to art. People would most likely opt for music or acting these days if it came to that. The people who make novels have their own good reasons for writing them, but I don't think many novel writers nowadays are solely motivated by a desire to make that singularly great American one that once seemed possible in the back of the mind of many, and on the tip of the lip of Mailer for most of his career.
Mailer literalized the hunt for the Great American Novel as an agon for writers with their dedicated talents jostling for its prize, competitors for the thing that just might be had, might be made by dint of the superior effort of the very best of them, just then as the era of the Death of the Novel was beginning in earnest.
The Death of the Novel has been going on for decades now and it gets more press these days than talk of the Great American Novel does. Well, of course, it's a terrible loss for all concerned, the Death of the Novel, and it's only fitting that anyone with any sensitivity at all should pause to say a few words over the corpus, which was such a fine fit art in its day, now dying off, killed by offspring, just as it assisted in its own day in the Death of Poetry. Ah, well, in all the decades since the conclusive end of the form was first discerned, many sobering words on the subject have been announced with all the niceties of thoughtfulness and remorse that the occasion requires, and many wonderful novels have been published, but mostly, it is taking so long to complete that the Death of the Novel, too, seems more likely a goal than a destination. Whether it can be reached before the Great American Novel is uttered remains an open question.
I'm sure Mailer was aware that The Executioner's Song is a magnificent book, and that his own high regard for it would be shared unfailingly down the ages by those who read it. And yet in the end he felt he hadn't created the thing, the Great American Novel that every novel writer of his generation had been led to believe was out there to be had.
Well, it was always more of a goal than a destination, The Great American Novel, and it doesn't even come up much anymore, really, even in the context of some wistful plan to throw down everything and devote oneself to art. People would most likely opt for music or acting these days if it came to that. The people who make novels have their own good reasons for writing them, but I don't think many novel writers nowadays are solely motivated by a desire to make that singularly great American one that once seemed possible in the back of the mind of many, and on the tip of the lip of Mailer for most of his career.
Mailer literalized the hunt for the Great American Novel as an agon for writers with their dedicated talents jostling for its prize, competitors for the thing that just might be had, might be made by dint of the superior effort of the very best of them, just then as the era of the Death of the Novel was beginning in earnest.
The Death of the Novel has been going on for decades now and it gets more press these days than talk of the Great American Novel does. Well, of course, it's a terrible loss for all concerned, the Death of the Novel, and it's only fitting that anyone with any sensitivity at all should pause to say a few words over the corpus, which was such a fine fit art in its day, now dying off, killed by offspring, just as it assisted in its own day in the Death of Poetry. Ah, well, in all the decades since the conclusive end of the form was first discerned, many sobering words on the subject have been announced with all the niceties of thoughtfulness and remorse that the occasion requires, and many wonderful novels have been published, but mostly, it is taking so long to complete that the Death of the Novel, too, seems more likely a goal than a destination. Whether it can be reached before the Great American Novel is uttered remains an open question.
September 19, 2007
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