About music criticism

In the New Yorker, interesting thoughts from Kelefa Sanneh about how music criticism got too nice. I find two particular takeaways. One I really should have known already: that in 1970, Robert Christgau classified some of his favourite bands (in his case the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Stooges) as “semipopular music”. I take this to mean acts that are neither (or no longer) in the underground, but nor are they selling out arenas; credible but more or less profitable; perhaps a bit more known about than known. And I wonder who from my own collection might occupy the same space. Perhaps Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, Stereolab, Magnetic Fields... and then I recall that two of the Magnetic Fields aren’t coming on their next European jaunt because of “work commitments” which suggests they have real, dull jobs and the Mags are perhaps a bit less than “semipopular”. And then in turn I recall that Field Music (nine albums and counting) have to moonlight as a Doors cover act to make ends meet. And I wonder whether the blanding of music criticism really matters, because it looks as if music sure as hell doesn’t.

And then something I wish I hadn’t known: one reason critics are wary of giving a proper early-80s-NME-style kicking to music is for fear of giving offence. Not necessarily to the artists themselves, but to anybody who happens to like those artists. And not just because some of the more devoted fans (Sanneh notes the behaviour of Nicki Minaj’s acolytes among others) might take forceful exception to anyone pointing out flaws in their idols. No, apparently it’s rude simply to dislike something that others might like, and the exhortation to refrain from this has its own emetic label: “don’t yuck my yum”. Which I don’t like, but maybe I’m not allowed to say that.

About Sweden

The Swedes have got themselves into all sorts of bother by attempting to identify their country’s cultural heritage by means of a definitive canon, a list of what matters. The stricture that insists on only material from before 1975 being included allows for the presence of Pippi Longstocking, Ingmar Bergman and IKEA, but means that much of the cultural output prompted by recent migration – not to mention ABBA – has been excluded. Inevitably, there are rumblings that certain right-wing interests will be more than happy with this.

Even without the arbitrary (or not) cut-off date, the whole thing is misconceived. For a start, Swedish culture – any culture – is shaped as much by outside forces as by what is created within its borders and this was the case even before our hyperconnected age. A reasonably well-educated Swede has always known about Plato and Shakespeare, Beethoven and Kurosawa as much as Strindberg or the Nobel Prize.

Ultimately, though, as ED Hirsch’s quixotic efforts have consistently proved, while a cultural canon may well exist, attempting to define it as an objective reality, including X but leaving out Y, is ultimately pointless. Any such document is at best a starting point for a conversation, at worst a crass act of gatekeeping. And any half-decent artist left outside should count that as a badge of honour, pleading the Groucho clause in his or her defence. Hit it, Benny.

About the gatekeepers

I’m not even sure if it’s possible any more to identify a left/right divide in politics, especially as the two sides increasingly seem to share each other’s behavioural clothes. I mean, what are the recent outbursts of flag mania around England if not a recuperation of what, when done by leftists, was decried as “virtue signalling” (taking the knee, for example)? And Gavin Newsom’s knowingly unhinged tweets are clearly intended to troll of The Orange Toddler but I have no difficulty imagining a left-wing populist doing that sort of thing for real.

And in the possibly irrelevant world of books and similar clever stuff, Philip Hensher rails against “progressive gatekeepers” for elevating ideological purity above any concept of literary quality. But, as Hensher himself acknowledges, this is just the same tactic that the forces of conservatism deployed when they wanted to get rid of The Well of Loneliness (and Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Last Exit To Brooklyn and Ulysses and Tess of the D’Urbervilles und so weiter).

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

About the Orient Express

I’ve been responsible over the years for more than enough of what’s known as luxury lifestyle journalism, so I know the deal. You don’t bite the hand. And, as such, I’m not going to criticise Angela Giuffrida for what might seem to be an unduly gushing write-up of the relaunched Orient Express service between Sicily and Rome. I do wonder, though, whether anyone prepared to spend upward of €11,000 on a nostalgic trundle aboard said train will need to have it explained to them who Poirot is, the relevant book in which he appears, or who wrote it.

PS: And on the Today programme this morning (Wed 27), we had it explained to us what the Holocaust was.

PPS: And there’s more, there’s always more. Apparently there are people who don’t know what punk rock was.

About the return of pictures

Probably the most exciting thing I did this past week was (very belatedly) to change the default browser on my laptop from Safari to Chrome. Not exactly a life-changing experience but now I think I know why I haven’t been able to post any pictures or videos here for the past year or so. And to commemorate that milestone of mundanity, here’s the prettiest picture I’ve encountered in recent months. It’s by Cosimo Tura (1430-1495) and it’s at the National Gallery, where they call it A Muse (Calliope?) which makes it sound like something arch and self-referential that Duchamp might have thought up. Which is probably why I like it so much.

About writing a screenplay

From Then We Came To The End, by Joshua Ferris. How many of us can identify, however uncomfortably, with this?

He had another screenplay about a disaffected and cynical copywriter suffering ennui in the office setting while dreaming of becoming a famous screenwriter, which he claimed was not autobiographical.

About the death of fiction

Alwyn Turner argues that we are in a “post-fiction world” in which the death of any form of common culture means that any remaining common points of reference (Sherlock Holmes, Daleks and so on) are from the past. Nothing new is coming along that we can assume everybody, or even a healthy majority, will know and understand. (Turner also reminds us that you don’t need to have read a line of Doyle, or even seen a film or TV adaptation, to know who Sherlock Holmes is.) And what stands in their place is the mundanity of fact:

The need for a shared culture remains, but in the absence of fiction we have the dominance of ‘reality’, a social agenda dominated by news stories and sport, not by Morecambe and Wise or who was on Top of the Pops last night. Strip away major events – the Royal Family, Brexit, Covid – and what have been the shared moments of the last ten years? The fortunes of the various national football teams, dissatisfaction with politicians and politics, and a handful of hashtags (#MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter) that emerged from the internet to dominate conversation around the dinner-tables and water-coolers of the nation. It’s all factual. 

Coincidentally, I’ve been reading Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines, which collects short news items from French publications in the early 20th century, any one of which might be the starting point for some convoluted epic by Flaubert or Hugo. Or, indeed, to monopolise a water-cooler for a few minutes.

“To die like Joan of Arc!” cried Terbaud from the top of a pyre made of his furniture. The fireman of Saint-Open stifled his ambition.  

At Troyes, M.M.C., a hide merchant, was run over by a train. One of his legs rolled into a ditch.  

Accountant Auguste Bailly, from Boulogne, fractured his skull when he fell from a flying trapeze. 

The gendarmes of Morlaix were sent to Plougar to substitute lay teachers for the nuns who had barricaded themselves in the school. 

Frogs, sucked up from Belgian ponds by the storm, rained down upon the streets of the red-light district of Dunkirk. 

Nurse Elise Bachmann, whose day off was yesterday, put on a public display of insanity. 

And a few lines later...

A certain madwoman arrested downtown falsely claimed to be nurse Elise Bachmann. The latter is perfectly sane.

About patron saints

A tiny snippet in my ongoing effort to determine that which we are expected to know. On ITV’s The Chase this afternoon, a contestant was asked, “Who is the patron saint of surfers?” Now, I didn’t know the answer. Given the options (Valentine, Peter, Christopher), I would have guessed Christopher, because of the myth of him carrying Jesus across the water, but it would have been a guess.

The contestant didn’t know either, which is fair enough. But more than that, she didn’t understand the question. I’m not inferring that from her look of bafflement: she actually said as much. She didn’t understand what a patron saint was. Maybe she didn’t understand what a saint was. In the end she picked Valentine, because maybe he surfed.