Reviews and News:
Liel Leibovitz goes to a Billy Joel concert and discovers that he’s right. Billy Joel really is the most witless, self-absorbed pop star out there: “With a smirk on his face, the Piano Man looked up and declared his virtue: At least, he said, he had the decency not to try and come up with any more original music and instead serve up only the lukewarm tunes of yesteryear his audience had loved since they heard it on the car radio en route to soccer practice three decades ago. He didn’t put it quite like that, of course, but the message was the same: In a sea of shysters, Joel’s the only hack who knows he’s a fraud. He knows how the system works. He knows pop is rigged, which, somehow, makes him the most honest person in the arena.”
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In defense of romance novels: “Paperback romance at its height remains delightfully frivolous while dramatizing something true—the armies of misjudgment, fear, and pride arrayed against the heart, the happy conspiracy needed to bring even the most unexciting lovers to the point where they can say, with A Clandestine Affair‘s Miss Tresilian and Lord Iver: ”What a vulgar couple we are, love!’ ‘Well, who cares a rush for that?’ he demanded. ‘Oh, my darling, what fools we have been!'”
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Who is a hypocrite?
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What is in a thin mint?
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In Case You Missed It:
Political correctness on the couch: In Political Correctness and the Destruction of Social Order: Chronicling the Rise of the Pristine Self, Howard Schwartz “theorizes that we are seeing the actions of a kind of narcissist that demands that all contacts from the world at large be loving nurturing, and affirming, and who believes such a state of affairs to be a right, of which he or she has been deprived by the social structure. Such people subconsciously wish to live in the imaginary state of infants who receive all nurture and protection from the mother.”
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Elizabeth Bishop is universally praised today, but does she have any shortcomings? A. M. Juster: “A ‘great’ poet…offers a vision and body of work that provokes strong emotions and worthwhile reflection. Bishop is too self-absorbed to meet that standard. Moreover, with just a few memorable exceptions, her subject matter has such limited range that one can create a template for much of her poetry.”
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The adolescent charm of celebrity poetry: “Like teenagers, famous people are indulged and relatively gorgeous. They have so many options ahead of them. They survive on whims. They have other, smarter people on-hand to make all of their biggest decisions, which leaves them time to pursue their teen- or teen-adjacent interests…Like most teens, they sometimes make really bad, terribly serious art.”
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Did Jane Austen die of arsenic poisoning?
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Interview: Ben Domenech and Scott Greer talk about race and college campuses. “Everyone is competing to be the bigger victim to prove that they are victimized.”
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Classic Essay: Walker Percy, “Bourbon, Neat”
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