This from Charles Taylor's review of Bob Dylan's autobiography:
We know what to think of celebrities. They're all egomaniacs and publicity whores -- doesn't matter if they're Paris Hilton or Bob Dylan. That's how all the pomo Hedda Hoppers have told us to think about celebrity. Forget about the work; it's the image that matters. Irony is the new Jesus. Crucified on Sept. 11, it rose again to sit at the right hand of ... well, maybe not God, but at least Maureen Dowd.
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But then there's this from Tom Carson's review of Jon Stewart's "America: The Book":
And Stewart, who might have been mistaken for a real Sept. 10 kind of guy, has turned into the Bush years' sharpest jester, a satirist who doubles for his fans as a goofy, imperturbable reality check. Nobody better demonstrates how those post-9/11 reports on the death of irony turned out to be, well, ironic. Bush's excesses have restored irony from its decadence in Letterman's salad days, when it came to mean adopting a winky superciliousness as your default reaction to everything, to its best purpose, which is as a coping strategy with a moral value.
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No answers on that one. All I know is that there are far too many good books to be reading at the moment. I've just started the new Roth, I'm halfway through Greg Kot's Wilco biography, and once I'm done with those two, I'd like to finally bother with some Salinger and treat myself to "Positively Fifth Street." But there's "America: The Book" tempting me from my living room floor (where it lies open amongst a pile of dirty shirts), and it's battling with my strong desire to go on a full-bore Dylan kick, with the autobiography and the Christopher Ricks close-reading analysis. As if that weren't enough, I've been feeling a lurking urge to settle down with Job, Ecclesiastes and a cup of coffee. There's something in there that I need, and I don't yet know what. Could be honest confrontation with the Divine; could be caffine.
But then I remember that I have two jobs, and the Red Sox are on in 30 minutes, and I could really use some dinner before poker. The books will remain closed for one more day.
Posted by mesh at October 8, 2004 03:43 PM | TrackBack