Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (04/13/87)
Really-From: rutgers!uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor (Mr. Sharkey....white courtesy phone, please) Hail Hondtjes: I mentioned the book whose title is the subject line of this note last week. Well into it now, it occurs to me that it might be of a somwhat broader interest to a number of your here-if only for its ah...robust populist premises. At least insofar as you can imagine an Oxford University Press book with quotes from the Police and the Silhouettes inside. Here is just a little teaser or two from the introduction to pique your interest. I'm sure that Hsu and Waara and Wic and Hof will appreciate Robert Pattison's definition of elitism.... "The Triumph of Vulgarity: Rock Music in the Mirror or Romanticism" (from the preface) If my argument is correct, I think it would tend to support the following statements: * Ours is a more homogeneous culture than we generally allow, in which elite and popular cultures subscribe to a single set of ideas. * Prominent among these ideas is Romantic pantheism. * In its pure form, Romantic pantheism encourages vulgarity. * American democracy provides and ideal setting for the growth of Romantic pantheism. * Poe's "Eureka" and the Velvet Underground are products of a single cultural force. * What separates elite from popular culture is its unwillingness to embrace the vulgarity inherent in its own premises (!). * There is more ideological vigour and consistency in the music of the Talking Heads than in the paradoxes of the academy. * 19th century Romanticism lives on in the mass culture of the 20th century, and the Sex Pistols come to fulfill the prophecies of Shelley. * Vulgarity is no better and no worse than the pantheism out of which it grows. * Believing in Whitman, the democrat should also glory in the Ramones. I'd be particularly interested in seeing a review of the book from someone like Simon Frith (or even Greil Marcus or David Marsh, whose weenie quotients are occasionally in the red zone, but who struggle for something approaching ideological criticism) for sure. It's near certain that Pattison's use of Romantic seems to differ from mine (of course, he's the scholar), and I'm sure that his arguments for the relative lack of distinction between the popular and the artistic would enrage several of you no end, but it's for sure that this is quite a thought-provoking book. It's published by the Oxford University press, written by Robert Pattison. Bug your library for it or shell out the 20$ like I did. We get Roger Miller, Birdsingers, and the Skinny Pups (now big time Capitol Records stars) all in the next month. Bye bye ears.