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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part V

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Two Personal Favorites: Spook Country (2007) and Domino (2005) Spook Country The toughest challenge for any author is to follow up a big hit with an equally big hit.  Following the epic genius of Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon released the misunderstood novel Vineland.  In the case of William Gibson, he experienced career resurgence with the release of Pattern Recognition, an “empathetic thriller” about advertising, intelligence, and an elusive video.  Gibson set the novel in the present and it reads like a strange relic, an artifact set in a world after 9/11 but before YouTube. Spook Country follows the same general … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part V

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part IV

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Nathan Rabin and the Countercanonical Critique The AV Club has carved out a niche of reputable pop cultural criticism.  Nathan Rabin has been profiled before in the Art of Reviewing.  It focused on his unique style and examined his ongoing series My Year of Flops.  Rabin’s bombastic style plays off his subject matter, whether it is a movie that bombed at the box-office or a hip hop review.  Rabin has expanded his critical eye to include country music (Nashville or Bust!) and pop ephemera (THEN! That’s What They Called Music). Movie flops, the NOW That’s What I Call Music! compilations, … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part IV

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part III

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Reappropriation: Camp, Kitsch, and Sincerity “When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it’s often because it is too mediocre in its ambition.  The artist hasn’t attempted to do anything outlandish.” – “Notes on Camp” [1965], Susan Sontag “Need more clarification? To his fans Liberace was the epitome of cultured taste, but of course we know he was kitsch. However, unlike the not-quite-weird-enough musical stylings of ABBA, say, or the Village People, Liberace-style kitsch is so weird, so outré, that hipsters find it impossible to appropriate as cheese. Liberace didn’t make his work inappropriable on purpose; others, however, have. The … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part III

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part II

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Unpopularity as Popularity: or How to be a hipster. “Every aspect of hipster culture amounts to little more than an elaborate pissing contest.  …  Hipsters ignore rules because they think it will make them look like they don’t care. There is no end result, just a continuous cycle of mediocre indie rock and scruffy looking dudes. By basing their actions on avoiding the mainstream, they are in fact guided by the mainstream.” – “Cracked Topics: Hipster”, Cracked.com You’re not cool enough.  The bands you like aren’t unpopular enough. Hipsters, the annoying quasi-subculture, has its own uses and abuses of unpopularity. … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part II

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Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part I

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“In place of a hermeneutrics we need an erotics of art.” – “Against Interpretation” [1964], Susan Sontag Challenges and Non-Responses The job of the critic is, by turns, tastemaker, evangelist, and champion.  The best critics harness the powers of intellection and enthusiasm to inform his or her readership on a work’s merits.  If a work receives more merits than demerits, than, in a roughly mathematical fashion, the creator obtains a “good review.”  This reviewer finds works with “mixed reviews” or polarizing reactions (see Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones) most attractive, since “mixed reviews” are not sure things.  A tiny element … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part I

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Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West

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The short tragic life of Nathanael West produced four novels.  Dying penniless and alone, West bequeathed a literary legacy that has reverberated in the works of Alexander Theroux and Thomas Pynchon.  The two works collected here, “Miss Lonelyhearts,” a long short story, and The Day of the Locust, a novella; offer the reader a sampling of West’s scathing apocalyptic satire.  In little over 180 pages, the reader encounters ferocious black humor, hard-boiled surrealism, and apocalyptic visions.  Nathanael West belongs to the family of innovative literary Modernists like T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and William Faulkner. “Miss Lonelyhearts” is a story about … Continue reading Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West

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Jesus of Nazareth by Paul Verhoeven

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At first glance, the idea that Paul Verhoeven, director of Basic Instinct, Robocop, and Starship Troopers, wrote a book on Jesus strikes one as the set-up to a particularly tasteless joke.  Fortunately, Verhoeven offers the reader his perspective on the Historical Jesus in his book, Jesus of Nazareth. Trained in mathematics and a prolific filmmaker, Verhoeven has been a member of the Jesus Seminar since he moved to Los Angeles in 1985.  He occupies a unique intellectual position within the Jesus Seminar due to his status as non-academic, non-theologian, and non-believer.  (But belief is not a prerequisite to historical investigation … Continue reading Jesus of Nazareth by Paul Verhoeven

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The Art of Reviewing Special Edition(TM): The 20 Minute “Avatar” Review

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Every blog needs a large-scale project. The Art of Reviewing will explore reviewing as an art form and as a valuable element to understanding society.  During this project, I will profile specific reviewers of merit.  Several specific cases also explore other facets of reviewing. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s making the rounds on Ye Olde Nettertubes.  It’s a twenty-minute review of James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar. Here’s the review, in two parts: *** COMMENTARY This review is a bit long and a bit cynical, but it makes a number of valid points.  It is an artful combination of pop … Continue reading The Art of Reviewing Special Edition(TM): The 20 Minute “Avatar” Review

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The Art of Reviewing: Nathan Rabin

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Every blog needs a large-scale project. The Art of Reviewing will explore reviewing as an art form and as a valuable element to understanding society.  During this project, I will profile specific reviewers of merit.  Several specific cases also explore other facets of reviewing. Noted Nathan Rabin impressionist David Cross. Nathan Rabin is the hip hop music reviewer for the AV Club.  He hails from Chicago and calls himself “the world’s most secular Jew.”  His other noteworthy contributions to pop culture criticism include “Nashville or Bust,” a long-term series exploring country music, and “My Year of Flops.”  With the latter, … Continue reading The Art of Reviewing: Nathan Rabin

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I Think, Therefore Who Am I?: Memoir of a Psychedelic Year, by Peter Weissman

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In the film The Limey (Steven Soderbergh, 1999), the record producer Terry Valentine offers his girlfriend an evocative speech describing the Sixties. “Did you ever dream about a place you never really recall being to before?  A place that maybe only exists in your imagination?  Some place far away, half remembered when you wake up.  When you were there, though, you knew the language.  You knew your way around.  That was the sixties.” After a pause, he continues.  “No.  It wasn’t that either.  It was just ’66 and early ’67.  That’s all there was.”  Peter Weissman’s memoir I Think, Therefore … Continue reading I Think, Therefore Who Am I?: Memoir of a Psychedelic Year, by Peter Weissman

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