This is September 16, 2004, the first time I ever saw America. I have been and gone and returned and left again since then, and many of the things I think about the country have changed, but I still love it. I will leave Sydney tomorrow, arriving in Los Angeles Friday morning, and it will be like seeing an old friend again. (I will also see actual old friends again, which is good too.)
Erin and I are playing Bookshelf Roulette. I’ll let her explain:
(for those who are uninitiated, the Bookshelf Routlette concept comes from the brilliant Literary Disco podcast, which you should all listen to. The three hosts get three numbers from twitter, which indicated which bookshelf corner they count from, which shelf, and which book along, and they then discuss that book. It’s just one part of the podcast, but it’s always fun).
I gave Erin some numbers and she returned Melina Marchetta’s Saving Francesca, which I have not read. (I’ve read Looking for Alibrandi of course.)
And now it’s your turn. Your numbers are 3, 3, 26.
Counting clockwise from the top left corner of my bookcase returns the third shelf from the bottom, twenty-sixth book from the right, which, as you can see above, is Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.
I don’t remember when I bought this, though I imagine I did because it was a Penguin classic and at ten dollars I would have thought why not? I haven’t read it, partly because I’ve had a bad habit of taking it on flights with me and then, once aboard the plane, realizing that the last thing I want to read when stuck in a metal tube ten thousand feet above the ground is Lolita. I will be sure to not make this mistake when I fly SYD-LAX tomorrow.
Another reason I am yet to read this is the opening:
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee Ta.
The first sentence is a bit worn through overexposure to have much effect, but the rest is so remarkable in its use of language — the mastery Nabakov exhibits over the sounds and rhythm of his syllables — that I can’t read on. When Humbert announces “I was born in 1910, in Paris,” I don’t continue; I go back and read the opening again to admire anew what Nabakov does, apparently effortlessly, with his words. I wish I could do it too.
You too can play Bookshelf Roulette! Leave me some numbers and I’ll talk about another book. Or request some numbers and you can do the same!
Anonymous asked: I heard you and Erin were talking about writing an analysis of Taylor’s career and were looking for submissions. What happened to that?
This is a true and real thing! Erin and I were indeed editing a collection of essays about Taylor Swift. And we still are!
It was originally to be a summer project, and then we woke up to find that summer gone and the project not completed, and so it got put on the backburner a bit. But we were discussing it this week and we’re both definitely committed to seeing it through to completion.
We’ve had some great pitches for essays so far, but we’re open to some more, so if you would like to write something about Taylor for our collection, look over here for more details.
katherinestasaph asked: For me the key line in that is "Even more telling than the artists who get this cosign are the talented artists in the same ballpark who don’t - who tend to be the ones without influential PRs, canny positioning or contacts."
This line of argument really seems of limited use to me. There are thousands — millions — of great unheard artists out there that would benefit if they had a record deal, or a nicely shot video, or a smart PR rep working them, and theoretically every bad artist who has those resources is denying them to the unheard ones who don’t. But the music business isn’t a meritocracy and pointing out that you consider Jai Paul’s marketing to be gauche doesn’t re-apportion those resources. And Lex wasn’t, say, using the space at The Quietus to shine a light on those “talented artists in the same ballpark.”[*] He was trying to make media criticism do the work of musical criticism (note his original Tumblr post: “I go in on worthless hypescam Jai Paul,” with the unnamed poorly performing journalists only an afterthought).
I mean, I get the what about the artists you aren’t paying attention to? line when a writer is failing to tell a story properly due to such omission — for instance, articles about gay-positive rap that start and end with Macklemore — but there are untold quantities of new music out there. The idea that if only people would stop writing about Jai Paul they would select their subjects on the basis of merit seems extremely dubious.
*EDIT: Katherine responds
I mean, accusing Lex of “not shining a light on those talented artists in the same ballpark” is kind of ridiculous. I can’t think of many writers who do this more.
Yeah, that’s a fair point. And Lex has previously done exactly the thing I said he didn’t do here — I recall during the period where indie R&B was a hyped thing he wrote a “here are R&B acts you should check out” article that was well-written and valuable, for instance.
In which I go in on worthless hypescam Jai Paul and his terrible music (and throw shade at lots of music journalists).
I missed this important news story on holiday. Still, there’s always D4ft Pvnk.
I think JP’s music is rubbish too, but even if it wasn’t the jigsaw piece approach to marketing which is so ubiquitous across pop culture is a real joy-killer for me. (And yet obviously I feed it by clicking on news sites, Twitter links et al) Down with F4 culture! No wait, there’s new posts on my dashboard…
I really don’t get this new (?) thing in music journalism of reviewing marketing campaigns — and no, I haven’t got around to reading that exposé of Justin’s 20/20 Experience — but the end result really seems like a nouveau form of “he doesn’t even write his own songs!” The aim always seems to be to prove the music is bad not because it sounds bad or isn’t enjoyable but because the process by which it reaches the listener is inauthentic. To which: who gives a shit?
(I also dislike it because it seems real inside baseball writing. If you’re a music journo receiving tons of PR emails in your inbox and watching your RSS feed fill up with breathless coverage of the same thing, your reaction is probably roll-eyes-at-the-hype, but if you’re not actually one of that very select group of people, you probably barely notice the existence of this kind of thing.)
I mean, check this out from the above:
Not so much a bewitching patchwork of samples as a My First Textiles home kit gone horribly wrong, it traded entirely on positioning: a KCi & JoJo sample here, a Jennifer Paige cover there, look! His taste is just like ours, with his admiration of ’90s pop and R&B! What a fascinating musical magpie of the internet generation! Aren’t we all fascinating musical magpies in 2013! How zeitgeisty, how very…now! Let’s give him a round of applause for being so similar to us!
Someone tried to fool very smart music journalist Alex Macpherson into thinking well of Jai Paul, but please notice that very smart music journalist Alex Macpherson saw right through their plot! What phonies these people are and how authentic v.s.m.j Alex Macpherson is for not being taken in by their phoniness!
I mean I don’t even remember what Jai Paul sounds like. (When did he first briefly matter? 2011? I dunno.) But I’m not exactly desperate for a new way to declare that certain artists aren’t real or to dismiss their fans as dupes.
EDIT: And I do appreciate the value of media criticism. But this isn’t media criticism — the coverage is a (very) peripheral target.
Tim McGraw ft. Taylor Swift & Keith Urban, “The Highway Don’t Care,” Two Lanes of Freedom (2013)
“Highway Don’t Care” is notable for having Tim McGraw on the same track (though not in the same studio) as Taylor Swift — she who named her debut single after McGraw. There’s nothing else particularly remarkable about the tune though — the McGraw-Swift connection is serviceable but there’s little chemistry — other than the fact that it’s a quite nice Tim McGraw tune. I like nice Tim McGraw tunes.
Keith Urban adds some guitar, and that’s… well… good for him.
Please note that a later pressing of Taylor’s eponymous debut album included a recording of a radio interview that captured the first time McGraw and Taylor spoke to one another. McGraw bemoans that he feels old; Taylor is awed. Now they work together!
The best part of that interview is this:
Taylor: And could you tell Faith Hill I said hello?
McGraw: I sure will. And she loves the song too, by the way.
Taylor (totally fangirling): Oh my gosh, she’s awesome.
(Source: Spotify)
Bruce Schneier, on why we must keep calm and carry on after the Boston Marathon bombing. (via theatlantic)
One of the best things I’ve read in a very, very long time.
(via naysayersspeak)
Actually I can think of a few more things you can do to combat this terrorism thing: stop being cunts to most other people in the world, remove US forces from Saudi Arabia, go back in time and un-invade Iraq, learn from history and realise that nobody ever wins in Afghanistan and then go back in time and un-invade them too.
No idea what is behind this Boston thing, obviously, but Americans acting like they’re targeted, all the time, by people because they’re just so good at living free is insane.
File under: Self-righteous Australians who conveniently forget Australia also invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
AVRIL LAVIGNE - HERE’S TO NEVER GROWING UP
[4.67]
Jonathan Bradley: Once upon a time, while sitting in a dull high school assembly, a friend and I entertained one another by making a packet of chips dance as we imitated the horn riff from Radiohead’s “The National Anthem.” I mention this because, even if Radiohead songs aren’t exactly the stuff of sing-alongs, any music someone feels enthusiastically enough about can become the stuff of social experience. And yet Avril’s Radiohead reference on “Here’s to Never Growing Up” feels incongruous because Yorke’s band has become the quintessential example of self-consciously cerebral music specifically designed not to be shared. One listens to Radiohead seriously and in seclusion; one does not share or exult in the communal experience of Radiohead, and so Avril’s elated chorus about getting drunk and hollering along to “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” or whatever suggests that maybe she Just Doesn’t Get It. But meeting people is easy, y’know, and when Radiohead escapes the studio, people use this very popular band in the same way they use the music of loads of other popular bands: to form connections, to express shared joy, to celebrate and sing along to. Avril is about a year younger than I am, and Radiohead is in its own way as adolescent as Avril has so determinedly been throughout her career, which makes this hook a double felicitous absurdity. More than anything else though, “Never Growing Up” sounds much older — as distinct from more mature — than anything Lavigne’s done before; compared to the immediacy of the joie de vivre in Taylor Swift’s thematically identical “22,” this tune sounds like its youthful clamor is transitory — and all the more precious for it.
[9]
Let’s all lol at how I’m almost thirty.
Follow the brilliant career of Jonathan Bradley, noted iconoclast, libertine, and man of letters. When he's not blogging here, he blogs at The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia. Jonathan is the editor of American Review magazine's daily Blog Book section and a daily editor at the Singles Jukebox.
e-mail: saturdayclubproductions [at] gmail.com
twitter: @_jbradley
